President Barack Obama paid a visit to FBI headquarters in downtown Manhattan recently to thank agents and members of the Brooklyn-based NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force for their work in thwarting an alleged bomb plan, with the city’s subway system the likely target.
The central figure in the case, 24-year-old Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi, has been held without bail since his arrest on September 19, and is on trial in federal court in Brooklyn for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
The visit to 26 Federal Plaza near City Hall on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, caused traffic snarls dubbed “Barack-lock” by media and led to the closing of subway entrances.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Tuesday that he would not be attending the event. “It has nothing to do with me working with him [Obama]” Bloomberg said, adding, “I have a campaign; I don’t want to politicize the event.”
Flushing Imam, Ahmad Afzali, 37, who was arrested last month on charges he warned the elder Zazi that the son was being investigated and lied to federal agents about it, was indicted on Monday, October 19. He remains free on $1.5 million bond.
There were no new charges added to the indictment, according to Afzali’s defense attorney, Ron Kuby. Calling it “a tired rehash of the same tired stuff,” Kuby suggested that, “President Obama is coming to town so I guess they wanted to give him a gift.”
Recently released transcripts of conversations between agents and a federal judge suggested that there were communication difficulties that may have delayed Afzali’s arrest.
FBI agent Farbod Azad is quoting as saying “Your honor, I think we are on … we got our system to work,” and later “It wasn’t easy, either,” in a September 19 call to federal Magistrate-Judge E. Thomas Boyle of the court in Central Islip.
Boyle reportedly signed the arrest warrant for Afzali after asking a few questions, and after Azad commented, “What could go wrong did go wrong.”
Afzali was arrested minutes later according to reports, and charged with making false statements “in a matter involving international and domestic terrorism.” He had been a source of information about the Muslim community for authorities in the past, according to reports
Zazi’s father, Mohammed, was also indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver for allegedly lying to investigators; he is also free on bond.
Officials have alleged that the younger Zazi, a former financial district coffee vendor and Denver airport courtesy car driver, had bomb-making instructions on his laptop computer. They say he traveled to Pakistan to attend a bomb-making terrorist school and bought materials used to manufacture the same kind of explosive used in the 2005 London subway massacre. Surveillance videos allegedly show him purchasing acetone and hydrogen peroxide – two ingredients of Triacetone Triperoxide.
Authorities allege that Zazi traveled to Flushing in advance of this year’s September 11 weekend and attempted to create the explosive compound, which they say would have been loaded into a number of backpacks found in a raided Flushing apartment.
According to reports, the FBI is probing at least three other possible suspects who allegedly also bought chemicals to make the explosives.
The terror probe is a “major priority of a joint city-federal terror task force,” according to reports, which also say that officials are denying friction between the NYPD and the FBI, primarily over the timing of the raids and cops’ handling of Afzali.
