May 4, 2010

Faisal Shahzad Gave Appearances of Family Man

Former Neighbors of Accused Times Square Bomber the Married Father of Two Kept To Himself, Claimed to Work on Wall St.

 

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Now the Pakistani-American is accused of trying to detonate a homemade car bomb in New York City's bustling Times Square.

Shahzad, 30, was on board a Dubai-bound flight at Kennedy Airport when law enforcement took him into custody late Monday, officials said. One official said he claimed to have acted alone.

Despite becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen on April 17, 2009, Shahzad spent much of the past year outside of the country, mostly in Pakistan where his wife, Huma Mian, is currently living. Details of his activities abroad remain unclear, but a picture of his life in American began to emerge Tuesday.

Shahzad, along with his wife and children, a boy and a girl, lived for about three years in a two-story Colonial-style three-bedroom home in Shelton, Conn., former neighbors said.

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.

"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.

Shahzad was currently living with a roommate in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of multi-family homes in Bridgeport, Conn. Authorities removed filled plastic bags from that house overnight and a bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street.

He became a citizen in Hartford, Conn., and passed all the criminal and national security background checks required for citizenship, officials said.

The officials familiar with the inquiry say investigators plan to go through his citizenship application line by line to see if he lied about anything.

On June 2, 2009, Shahzad departed the U.S. for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In July, he reportedly traveled to Pakistan and is believed to have visited Peshawar, a city known as a gateway to the militant-occupied tribal regions of the country, according to MSNBC.

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.

Shahzad last entered the U.S. on Feb. 3, 2010 after a five-month visit to Pakistan. According to authorities he purchased the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder used in the attempted bombing three weeks ago for $1,300. He responded to a Craigslist ad and paid for the vehicle in cash.

After media reports late Monday that authorities were looking for a Pakistani-American man, Shahzad fled to Kennedy airport, boarding a flight for Dubai before law enforcement called the plane back to the terminal and the arrest was made.

According federal law enforcement official, materials related to the homemade car bomb were found in Shahzad's apartment, including the boxes that contained the alarm clocks. His car at the airport contained a 9mm handgun with extra clips of ammunition.

He is expected to appear in court later Tuesday and has been talking to investigators, officials said.

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
CBS news