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.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS