By Ivan Pereira
A second Flushing man pleaded guilty Friday to plotting to destroy the city’s subways systems as part of an al Qaeda operation.
Zarein Ahmedzay, 25, faces up to life in prison for charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder U.S. military overseas and supplying terrorists with resources.
In a long statement made before U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Gold in Brooklyn Federal Court, a nonchalant Ahmedzay admitted that he traveled to Pakistan in 2008 with fellow Flushing High School classmate Najibullah Zazi and another man and trained there with al Qaeda leaders.
“We told [them] that we wanted to wage jihad in Afghanistan, but they told us we would be more valuable to them if we wage jihad in the United States,” he told the judge.
Adis Medunjanin, another former classmate of Zazi and Ahmedzay, has also been charged in connection with the bomb plot, but Ahmedzay did not name him as the third man in his statement.
Zazi, who admitted to working with the terrorists and planning a bombing of the city’s subway lines in September, met with Ahmedzay in Flushing in the fall and gave him explosive devices, including a detonator. When the men got suspicious of the authorities who were watching them, they aborted the plan, but all three were eventually arrested.
A fourth suspect connected with the case was arrested in Pakistan and is awaiting extradition to the U.S., federal prosecutors said.
At the end of his statement to the judge, Ahmedzay went on a rant blaming those whom he claimed were responsible for terrorism around the world. The father of two, who began his statement by quoting the Koran, urged Americans to “stop supporting the war on Islam,” and took aim at Jews.
“There is a special group of Zionist Jews who I believe run a permanent shadow government,” he said before being stopped by the judge.
Gold issued a sentencing date of July 30 for Ahmedzay.
Last week, Flushing imam Ahmad Wais Afzali was sentenced to deportation from the United States for lying to the F.B.I. after they questioned him about conversations he had with Zazi during his time Flushing.
