Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi arrives in New York over 9/11 bombing plot (461 hits)
An accused Al Qaeda terrorist was hauled back to New York under intense security Friday as a prosecutor gave new details of a warped plot to detonate homemade bombs around the 9/11 anniversary. Najibullah Zazi, arrested last weekend in Denver, landed at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport about 5:45 p.m. and was whisked by NYPD helicopter into the city allegedly was his target two weeks earlier.
Just before the eighth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack, Zazi drove east in a rental car "intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11, for purposes of perhaps using such items," federal prosecutor Tim Neff said in Denver. The Afghan national, who came to Queens carrying nine pages of bomb-making directions, "was in the throes of making a bomb," Neff said. "The evidence suggests a chilling, disturbing sequence of events."
Instead, the 24-year-old Zazi bolted back to Denver on Sept. 12 after a Queens imam reportedly tipped him to round-the-clock federal surveillance. After landing at Teterboro, Zazi was brought by federal marshals to a ninth-floor special housing unit in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, sources told the Daily News. Until he's arraigned next week, the suspect will remain in solitary confinement, under 23-hour lockdown with just an hour of daily recreation. His meals will come through a slot in the cell door.
Current high-security inmates at the lockup include Bonanno crime boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano and the defendants in an alleged plot to blow up Kennedy Airport fuel lines. Zazi, a married airport shuttle bus driver, sat quietly in court Friday while a Denver judge ordered him held without bail before authorities shipped him to New York. He wore prison-issued garb, from his long white T-shirt to his blue canvas sneakers. He answered a few questions politely, but mostly sat at the defense table with a blank look.
He was loaded onto a plane at Denver's Centennial Airport shortly after noon there for the trip to New York. Zazi's parents and five siblings live in Colorado. The suspect moved from Queens to Aurora, Colo., last January after returning from a four-month trip to Pakistan. Authorities said he received bomb-making directions via e-mail during his stay in Peshawar. He is expected to appear in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday for arraignment. His two Colorado-based lawyers said they would represent Zazi despite the venue change.
The accused bomb-maker, who has protested his innocence, faces life in prison if convicted in a 13-month conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. No other suspects have been arrested in what prosecutors say was a plot to turn common beauty parlor products into potentially lethal explosives. Authorities say Zazi bought much of the bomb-making material at beauty parlors near his Aurora home.
During his bail hearing Friday, it was revealed that he had only $1,000 in his bank account. He declared bankruptcy in March after running up $50,000 in debt, much of it on recently issued credit cards. In a 12-page memo aimed at keeping him locked up without bail, prosecutors said evidence against Zazi runs the gamut from phone taps to seized e-mails to witnesses.
