An Afghan-born airport worker was charged with planning a massive bombing campaign on Thursday as authorities said they had foiled a string of similar but unrelated terror plots across the US.
Najibullah Zazi, 24, was indicted in New York on charges of conspiring to launch a wave of attacks using homemade bombs constructed with chemicals bought in large quantities from beauty parlor supply stores.
An unsealed grand jury indictment alleged Zazi had received bombmaking instruction in Peshawar, Pakistan, researched homemade explosives in Colorado and drove to New York intent on unleashing carnage.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the case was far from closed despite the arrest of Zazi, who was believed to be working with unidentified conspirators.
“We are investigating a wide range of leads related to this alleged conspiracy, and we will continue to work around the clock to ensure that anyone involved is brought to justice,” Holder said.
“We believe any imminent threat arising from this case has been disrupted, but as always, we remind the American public to be vigilant,” he said.
As details of the Zazi case emerged, authorities in Illinois and Texas announced arrests following separate undercover investigations that involved militant Islamists attempting to blow up buildings with car bombs.
A 29-year-old Illinois man, Michael Finton, known as Talib Islam, was arrested after driving a vehicle packed with inactive explosives to a federal building and courthouse in Springfield and attempting to detonate it.
US justice department officials said the arrest was the final act of an undercover operation lasting several months.
Details of the case were strikingly similar to an investigation later disclosed in Dallas, where a 19-year-old Jordanian man was arrested on charges of trying to bomb up a 60-story glass skyscraper in the city’s downtown.
Authorities said Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested after a sting operation involving FBI agents posing as members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell.
As in the Illinois case, federal agents pounced after Smadi had driven an inert car bomb to the targeted buildings.
Justice authorities in Texas and Illinois stressed, however, there were no links between their investigations and the Zazi case in New York and Denver.
In other unrelated investigations, authorities in New York said they had charged a man with seeking to commit murder in a foreign country after traveling abroad and trying to join a radical Islamic group.
New charges were also laid against three men in North Carolina already in custody for plotting “homegrown” attacks against the US.
Analysts speculated that publicity surrounding the Zazi case, which has been described as the most serious terrorist plot in the US since the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001, may have nudged law enforcement agencies into action.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied investigations into terrorism around the US, said developments in the myriad cases were “to some extent coincidental.”
“I think what’s been happening in New York and Colorado has sensitized everyone, including people in the government, and that may have stepped up the pressure to move on some other matters,” he said.
“Maybe all of these counterterrorism agencies are being hypersensitive. But it is odd to see so many cases in such a short space of time,” he said.
R.P. Eddy, a senior fellow for counterterrorism at the Manhattan Institute, told CNN the cases in Dallas and Illinois — one involving an illegal alien, the other a US citizen — highlighted the range of threats facing authorities.
“These are different types of attacks,” Eddy said. “Hopefully we finally realize we have to pay attention to every part of the spectrum.”
Zazi, who is to be transferred from Denver to New York, remains in detention and faces life in prison if convicted.
Meanwhile, New York imam Ahmad Wais Afzali, who is charged with lying to investigators on the case, was ordered released by a Brooklyn federal judge on 1.5 million dollars bail.
Zazi’s father in Colorado, also charged with lying, has likewise been ordered free on bail.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS