NEW YORK – A U.S. citizen who had recently returned
from a five-month trip to his native
Pakistan, where he had a wife, was arrested
at a
New York airport
on charges that he drove a bomb-laden SUV meant to cause a fireball in
Times Square, federal
authorities said.
Faisal Shahzad was on board a Dubai-bound flight at
Kennedy Airport when FBI agents and
New York Police Department detectives took
him into custody late Monday,
law enforcement officials said. One official
said he claimed to have acted alone.
U.S. authorities "will not rest until we have brought
everyone responsible to justice," Attorney Eric Holder said early
Tuesday, suggesting additional suspects are being sought.
Shahzad, 30, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and had
recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan, where he had a
wife, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated
Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
investigation into the failed car bombing.
Investigators hadn't established an immediate
connection to the Pakistani
Taliban — which had claimed responsibility
for the botched bombing in three videos — or any foreign terrorist
groups, a
law
enforcement official told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
"He's claimed to have acted alone, but these are
things that have to be investigated," the official said.
Another law enforcement official said Shahzad was not
known to the U.S. intelligence community before the failed bombing
attempt.
The U.S. attorney's office in
Manhattan was handling
the case and said Shahzad would appear in court Tuesday, but the charges
were not made public. FBI agents searched the home at a known address
for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn., early Tuesday, said agent Kimberly
Mertz, who wouldn't answer questions about the search.
Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the
house overnight in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of
multi-family homes in
Connecticut's
largest city. A
bomb
squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI
agents gathered in the cordoned-off street.
Shahzad was being held in
New York overnight and couldn't be
contacted. A phone number at a listed address for Shahzad in Shelton,
Conn., wasn't in service.
Related
He used to live in a two-story grayish-brown Colonial
with a sloping yard in a working-class neighborhood in Shelton. On
Tuesday morning, the home looked as if it had been unoccupied for a
while, with grass growing in the driveway and bags of garbage lying
about.
Neighbors offered diverging descriptions of Shahzad
but agreed that he kept to himself. One, Brenda Thurman, said Shahzad
had told her husband he worked on
Wall Street, while another neighbor, Audrey
Sokol, said she thought he worked in nearby Norwalk.
Thurman, 37, said he lived in Shelton with his wife
and two small children until last year.
"He was a little bit strange," she said. "He didn't
like to come out during the day."
Sokol, a teacher who lives next door to Shahzad's old
house, said that he would wave and say hello and that he seemed normal
to her.
Law
enforcement officials say Shahzad bought the SUV, a
1993 Nissan
Pathfinder, from a Connecticut man about three weeks ago and paid
cash. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because
of the sensitive nature of the case.
The vehicle identification number had been removed
from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and
investigators used it to find the owner of record, who told them he had
sold the vehicle to a stranger. As the SUV buyer came into focus,
investigators backed off other leads.
The SUV was parked on Saturday night on a busy
midtown Manhattan street near a theater
showing "
The Lion King."
The explosive device inside it had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected
to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended
to detonate gas cans and set propane tanks afire in a chain reaction
"to cause mayhem, to create casualties," police Commissioner Raymond
Kelly said.
A metal rifle cabinet placed in the SUV's cargo area was packed with
fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile
enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in
previous terrorist bombings.
Police said the SUV bomb could have produced "a significant fireball"
and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out
windows.
A vendor alerted a police officer to the parked SUV, which was smoking.
Times Square, clogged
with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours. A
bomb squad dismantled
the explosive device, and no one was hurt.
But Holder said Americans should remain vigilant.
"It's clear," he said, "that the intent behind this terrorist act was to
kill Americans."
Authorities did not address Shahzad's plans in
Dubai. The airport there is the Middle
East's busiest and is a major transit point for passengers traveling
between the West and much of Asia, particularly India and Pakistan.
Dubai-based
Emirates
airline said three passengers were pulled from Flight EK202,
which was delayed for about seven hours. The airline did not identify
Shahzad by name or identify the other two passengers.
The aircraft and passengers were then re-screened before taking off
Tuesday morning, and the airline is "cooperating with the local
authorities," Emirates said in a statement e-mailed to the AP.
In
Pakistan,
Interior Minister Rehman
Malik told the AP that authorities had not been formally asked for help
in the probe but would cooperate if asked.
More than a dozen people with American citizenship or residency, like
Shahzad, have been accused in the past two years of supporting or
carrying out terrorism attempts on U.S. soil, cases that illustrate the
threat of violent extremism from within the U.S.
Among them are
Army Maj.
Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Army psychiatrist of Palestinian
descent, charged with fatally shooting 13 people last year at
Fort Hood, Texas;
Najibullah Zazi, a Denver-area airport shuttle driver who pleaded guilty
in February in a plot to bomb
New York subways; and a Pennsylvania woman
who authorities say became radicalized online as "
Jihad Jane" and plotted
to kill a Swedish artist whose work offended Muslims.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writer Pete Yost in
Washington, AP Video journalist Ted Shaffrey in Bridgeport, Conn., AP
photojournalist Doug Healey in Shelton, Conn., and AP writers Chris
Brummitt in Islamabad, Adam Schreck in Dubai and John Christoffersen in
Shelton, Conn.
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