A 30-year-old U.S. immigrant from Pakistan was arrested late Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in connection with a failed car bombing in Times Square, and a Pakistani intelligence official reported multiple arrests in that country Tuesday as investigators pursued leads overseas.
Faisal Shahzad, a recently naturalized U.S. citizen living in Shelton, Conn., was taken off an airliner bound for the Persian Gulf sheikhdom of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates about 48 hours after the attempted bombing, authorities said Tuesday.
Investigators believe Shahzad paid cash for a Nissan Pathfinder that was found packed with explosives Saturday night on a tourist-crowded block in Midtown Manhattan. The vehicle was set on fire, but a homemade bomb inside failed to detonate.
In Pakistan, an intelligence official said authorities arrested at least two people in the southern port city of Karachi in connection with the Times Square bombing attempt. The official, who is not authorized to speak on the record, identified one of those arrested as Tausif Ahmed, who was picked up in a busy commercial neighborhood called Gulshan-e-Iqbal. He said Ahmed reportedly traveled two months ago to the United States to meet with Shahzad. The official did not have the other suspect's name.
Pakistani television stations reported that as many as five other people with links to the alleged plot may have been arrested in the central industrial city of Faisalabad, but those reports could not immediately be confirmed.
A top Karachi police official denied that any arrests have been made there in connection with the case.
Shahzad is from Pabbi, the main town of Nowshera District in northwestern Pakistan, near Peshawar, according to Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
A source close to the United Arab Emirates said Shahzad's name was placed on the U.S. government's no-fly list around midday Monday but that the suspect was not stopped before he bought a ticket and checked in for Emirates Airlines Flight 202 to Dubai, where he planned to change planes and fly on to Pakistan.
Instead, the airline noted that Shahzad made his reservation on the way to the airport and paid cash for the flight, alerting U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the source said.
"The question is, when did they become aware of his presence at the airport, and when was he put on the list?" the source said, describing a dialogue among the U.S. and UAE governments and the airline over responsibility for Shahzad's boarding of the aircraft.
Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond immediately to questions about when and whether Shahzad was placed on the no-fly list or how authorities were alerted to his flight plans.
It is possible, the source said, that U.S. officials did not want to tip off Shahzad, or that they wanted him to pass through security and board the airline for safety, intelligence gathering or legal reasons. However, the source said, law enforcement agencies typically prefer to isolate and apprehend people before they board an aircraft.
U.S. investigators located Shahzad after a two-day investigation that yielded what senior White House officials described as a flood of international and domestic clues. It was not immediately clear whether there was any link between Shahzad and videotapes that police circulated widely on Monday, showing men near the site of the attempted bombing who may have been acting suspiciously.
President Obama called the failed bomb plot an "attempted terrorist attack" and pledged that federal agencies would work aggressively to determine whether Shahzad had any connection to terror groups.
In a speech Tuesday morning to business leaders in Washington, Obama said, "Justice will be done, and we will continue to do everything in our power to protect the American people." He called the Times Square incident "another sobering reminder of the times in which we live."
"As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized," Obama said. "We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated."
The White House later said Obama had placed congratulatory phone calls to two vendors "who first reported the suspicious vehicle" and to two New York police officers "whose actions led to the evacuation of the area and the immediate response." Obama called vendor Duane Jackson on Monday and made calls Tuesday morning to vendor Lance Orton and officers Wayne Rhatigan and Pam Duffy "to thank them for their vigilance," press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.
Shahzad was apprehended by federal agents after he boarded Emirates Flight 202 at Kennedy.
Two other people were reportedly taken off the plane for questioning but subsequently released. The flight was delayed several hours, while all passengers were asked to disembark and go through additional screening, and the luggage and the plane were searched.
A spokesman for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington said Shahzad had planned to change planes in Dubai and fly to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Shahzad been in Pakistan for several months in 2009, returning to the United States in February 2010, a U.S. official said.
"It was clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a rare middle-of-the-night news conference at the Justice Department to announce the arrest.
It was not immediately clear what the charges were or where Shahzad was being held -- or whether other arrests were imminent. The U.S. attorney's office in New York said Shahzad will appear in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to be formally charged.
Federal investigators said they had executed a search warrant on Shahzad's home. Television news reports showed agents entering and leaving at least one home in the Bridgeport area.
In Pakistan, a news report on an English-language station said Shahzad has family links to the southern port city of Karachi. Pakistani officials said U.S. authorities have asked for their help investigating Shahzad, and they pledged cooperation.
The bomb attempt, which authorities said could have led to significant casualties if the explosives had detonated properly, bears some resemblance to the attempted bombing of an airliner in Detroit last Christmas, with citizen watchdogs earning much of the credit for averting the crisis and the White House scrambling to discover clues about a young male suspect with apparent ties that stretched beyond the United States
The 48 hours from the discovery of the Pathfinder to Shahzad's capture combined old-fashioned shoe-leather detective work, sophisticated digging through telephone and electronic records and the latest link-ups between federal immigration, travel and border databases.
A U.S. official said tracing the origin of the Pathfinder was a crucial part of the investigation. The car's Vehicle Identification Number had been removed from a dashboard plate and altered. But authorities were able to find the seller by using a decal sticker on the tailgate to trace the car to a Connecticut used car dealer, who early Sunday gave them sales records on two cars matching the Pathfinder's description.
About the same time, in Times Square, New York police had declared the explosives-laden Pathfinder safe, and were able to search the engine block and other parts of the vehicle and determine the correct VIN number. Authorities then found the vehicle's registered owner in Connecticut.
Shahzad allegedly bought the car for $1,300 about a week ago, responding to an Internet listing posted by the daughter of the person who bought the vehicle from the used car dealer. He gave the seller a fake name, but an e-mail from the transaction included a phone number that was from a disposable cellphone. Extrapolating from telephone records, authorities found Shahzad and confirmed his identity with the seller, the official said.
"The cooperation of the family was key," one law enforcement official said.
Armed with information about Shahzad's appearance, other identification information and his travel patterns, Customs and Border Protection officers at John F. Kennedy International Airport discovered he was booked on the Emirates flight Monday night. Authorities declined to say if he was traveling under his own name.
About the time Shahzad would have checked in for the scheduled 11:50 p.m. international departure, authorities began gearing up for a late-night arrest. As he arrived at the airport, and perhaps took comfort in the thought that he was leaving the country, agents confronted him and took him into custody.
Officials were reluctant to discuss Shahzad's potential ties to foreign extremists, except to say that they believed he was fleeing the country at the time of his arrest.
The centerpiece of the investigation was evidence gathered about the sale of the car. "That was the key factor to our getting the guy so quick," a U.S. law enforcement official said.
Investigators and agents also were scouring international phone records showing calls "between some of the people who might be associated with this and folks overseas," according to a U.S. official who has discussed the case with intelligence officers. Investigators uncovered evidence -- a piece of paper, fingerprints or possibly both -- that also indicated international ties, according to a federal official briefed on the investigation.
Before Shahzad's arrest, the official said the material points to "an individual who causes concern to [investigators], who has overseas connections, and they are looking for him."
An overseas angle does not necessarily mean that the incident was planned or financed by al-Qaeda or another organized group, investigators said. "Think smaller," said one senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
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"At this time, we believe [Shahzad] is responsible for assembling the bomb and driving to the site," another law enforcement official said, while cautioning, "If we learn later that in Pakistan he has done something in addition, I don't know."
It remained unclear whether there was any connection between the attempted bombing and the surveillance video that was widely broadcast Monday because it showed a man in his 40s changing his shirt in an alley and looking over his shoulder near where the Pathfinder was parked. New York City police officials had characterized the man as acting suspiciously, but multiple federal law enforcement officials said even before Shahzad's arrest that he might not be the focus of the investigation.
"It looks like he was just taking off his shirt because he was hot," said one law enforcement official.
Investigators also said they would be interested in speaking to another person captured on video running north on Broadway away from the area where the smoking sport-utility vehicle caused an evacuation of Times Square on a crowded weekend night.
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) told reporters Tuesday that "there is still plenty of work to do" following Shahzad's arrest, but he expressed confidence that the New York Police Department and the FBI "will fully unravel this case and bring the guilty to justice."
In a news conference, Bloomberg said, "This was an act that was designed to kill innocent civilians and strike fear into the hearts of Americans." However, he pointed to the crowds of people who have continued to flock to Times Square as evidence that New Yorkers are unafraid. "We will not be intimidated," he said.
Referring to the arrest of Shahzad, Bloomberg added that "we will not tolerate any bias or backlash against any Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers." He said New York remains proud of its reputation as a city where people of all faiths can practice their religion and where "people from every part of the world live in the same neighborhoods."
The mayor also hailed Lance Orton, one of two Times Square vendors who alerted police to the suspicious vehicle containing the explosives. As Orton stood beaming beside him, Bloomberg said the 56-year-old Vietnam War veteran displayed the vigilance that all New Yorkers should exercise at a time when "we remain a prime target for terrorists."
The New York-based, FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force is taking the lead role in the investigation, which had been overseen by the New York Police Department, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. That indicates that the failed bombing is being investigated as a terrorist incident with international connections, the official said.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko of the New York field office said in a statement Monday night that the "FBI JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] and NYPD are working this case jointly and have been since the beginning." The New York police force, known for its expertise in terrorism matters, is represented on the task force and will remain heavily involved in the probe, officials said.
In the rear of the SUV, police found a makeshift bomb made up of three tanks of propane similar to those used in backyard barbecues; two jugs of gasoline; dozens of M-88 firecrackers, which are legal for purchase in some states; and a metal gun case holding 100 pounds of fertilizer that police said was incapable of exploding.
Some officials cautioned that the international focus did not mean that other possibilities, such as domestic terrorism or an individual acting alone, were being ruled out. Neither did it mean, they said, that international ties automatically constituted a well-formed plot.
One federal law enforcement official, for example, said international communications don't necessarily "get you to an international plot, a multi-organizational plot."
"We're just not there," the official said.
The nature of the possible international connection also remained murky.
The Pakistani Taliban had asserted responsibility for the attempted bombing in a video posted on YouTube, but New York police and federal investigators have said no evidence had surfaced linking the group to the bomb.
On Sunday night, a second video was posted by apparent representatives of the Taliban, showing the group's commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, promising to launch attacks in the United States.
Mehsud, who U.S. and Pakistani authorities initially believed was killed in a January drone strike, was recorded saying, "The time is very near when our fedayeen will attack the American states in their major cities . . . in some days or a month's time."
The video is marked with the logo of the Pakistani Taliban's official media wing, Umar Studios, and appears to be credible, according to Evan F. Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners.
Brulliard reported from Pakistan. Staff writers Debbi Wilgoren, William Branigin, Anne E. Kornblut, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
THE WASHINGTON POST
Note: Well, did not take long to connect the dots from the United States to Pakistan! Now, I wonder if Obama will give another speech about how the Islamic terrorists belong to a Religion of Peace and that this is just an isolated incident. BeeSting
