He jogged late at night in traditional Islamic robes, according to a neighbour. He had moved his family out of their modest, suburban home in what seemed like a hurry. He disliked President Bush.
Otherwise, the man who allegedly set out to kill tourists in Times Square last weekend might have been one of them: a well-bred young man married to a woman from an equally respectable family, whose Facebook page said she loved Friends, shoe shopping “and of course Faisal”.
The chief suspect in the latest terror case to fixate the US Government and public was continuing to answer FBI questions yesterday in a jail cell in New York as the Obama Administration tightened its “no-fly” procedures for terror suspects and stepped up pressure on Pakistan to broaden its offensive against militants from every jihadist faction.
In Peshawar, senior Pakistani officials told The Times that Mr Shahzad, 30, received explosives training on his last trip to the region at a camp run by Qari Hussain, a known trainer of suicide bombers for the Taleban. Sources also said that the father of two, whose last-known job in the US was as a $50,000 (£33,000) a year financial analyst, was taken to South Waziristan by a lead member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an al-Qaeda-backed group blamed for a series of recent attacks in Pakistan.
He knew what he was getting into, even if almost no one else did. When they came for him at 11.02pm on Monday, as Emirates Flight 202 was preparing to push back from the gate at Kennedy airport, he looked up and said calmly: “I was expecting you. Are you NYPD or FBI?”
It was the end of a 12-year transformation from student to would-be bomber, during which Mr Shahzad defied all efforts by US intelligence agencies since 9/11 to home in on terrorists before they strike.
As a student he was “unremarkable” but diligent when it came to retaking his exams. As an office worker he was competent. As a US visa applicant he passed all the FBI’s security checks with “no derogatory information”.
He was a cipher, one of millions who came to America in the same period, appeared to like it and methodically progressed from immigrant to law-abiding citizen.
It was still unclear yesterday where he was born. Officials in Pakistan have said that it was in the northern province of Nowshera, but on university application forms found in a rubbish bin outside his abandoned home in Shelton, Connecticut, he gave Karachi as his place of birth.
What is beyond doubt is that he first came to the US in 1998 as 19-year-old student, the son of an air vice-marshal of the Pakistani Air Force, Baharul Haq, who remains well known as the founder of the Sherdils, the country’s leading military aerobatics team. He acquired two degrees, in computer science and business administration, from small private colleges in Washington and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
He showed no outward sign of being radicalised as a student or since. No mosques contacted since he allegedly left a smoking SUV in Times Square on Saturday have acknowledged any contact with a Faisal Shahzad. He shopped at a halal grocery in Bridgeport before his final trip to Pakistan last year, but he and his family also ate at the Red Lobster chain and Burger King.
On February 3 Mr Shahzad returned from Pakistan after nine months in Waziristan, but slipped beneath the FBI’s radar because, since April last year, he has been a US citizen and was therefore subject only to cursory immigration checks. His entitlement to citizenship came courtesy of his wife, Huma Mian, the daughter of a successful oil executive. They married in 2004.
“If this hadn’t happened I would have long forgotten him,” William Greenspan, one of Mr Shahzad’s undergraduate supervisors, told The New York Times.
He was remembered clearly yesterday in the village of Mohib Banda outside Peshawar, where friends of his family expressed great surprise at his arrest. “He came from a respectable family and was not even a religious person,” Kayfayatullah Khan said.
Another villager reacted with suspicion to the news emerging from New York. “America is our enemy,” Bashir-ur-Rehman said. “It wants to defame us. The arrest of Faisal is meant to malign a respected family and Pakistan.”
Car bomb suspect who slipped under radar is son of air force chief - Times Online
1 comments:
He had to be suspected, because he was a member from the same religion of peace as barack HUSSEIN obama. He was a muslim, they have a secret agenda, SHARIA law.
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