Time Square Bomb Suspect Confesses Bombing Plot, Training in Pak

A Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who has been arrested in Time Square car bomb case, has admitted trying to detonate the bomb and receiving bomb-making training in a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold in Pakistan, reported Reuters quoting US prosecutors.

A complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday said that Shahzad admitted ‘that he had attempted to detonate a bomb in Times Square’ and ‘that he had recently received bomb-making training in Waziristan, Pakistan’, said report

Shahzad, 30, was arrested late on Monday while he was about to flee to Dubai and hours later, many of his relatives were taken into custody in Pakistan according to report.

He was charged with five counts including, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and trying to kill and maim people within the US, report said.

“If successful it could have resulted in a lethal terrorist attack, causing death and destruction in the heart of New York City,” US Attorney General Eric Holder was quoted as saying about the bomb plot.

Prosecutors didn’t tell when Shahzad would appear before a judge in Manhattan federal court, report said.

Shahzad, who faces life sentence if he is convicted, is a former financial analyst, who had worked in neighbouring Connecticut.

He was accused of driving a crude homemade bomb of gasoline, propane gas, fireworks and fertilizer into a teeming Times Square on a warm Saturday evening.

The bomb was in a sports utility vehicle that prosecutors said Shahzad bought three weeks ago in Connecticut for $1,300 cash after it was advertised online. The Nissan Pathfinder was found in Times Square with a license plate from another car.

Street vendors selling T-shirts and handbags alerted police to the smoking and sparking vehicle that had been parked awkwardly with the engine running and hazard lights on near a Broadway theatre where Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ is performed.

“We believe that this suspected terrorist fashioned a bomb from rudimentary ingredients, placed it in a rusty SUV and drove it into Times Square with the intent to kill as many innocent tourists and theatregoers as possible,” Holder was quoted as saying.

Experts said that if the bomb had gone off in Midtown Manhattan’s ‘crossroads of the world’, many people would have died, said report.