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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

[ALOCHONA] AL men attack BNP rally-goers



1 killed, 100 hurt in Natore; hartal called in Bogra for Sunday
 
 
One person was killed and nearly 100 injured in Natore yesterday when activists of ruling Awami League attacked BNP activists on their way to attend the party's grand rally in Rajshahi.

The deceased was identified as Zakir Hossain, president of Garidaha Union under Bogra's Sherpur upazila.BNP leaders blamed the ruling AL for the killing but AL leaders made a counter-allegation, saying the opposition activists attacked the offices of the party's local units and houses and shops owned by AL men at Singra in Natore.
 
 
http://jugantor.info/enews/issue/2010/05/06/news0876.php

In protest of the killing, BNP will stage demonstrations in all the district headquarters Saturday and observe a half-day hartal in Bogra on Sunday. The namaz-e-janza (funeral) of Zakir Hossain will be held at Altafunnessa ground in Bogra today after the Zohr prayers. BNP and its front organisations will observe his gayebana janaza across the country Friday.

BNP Secretary General Khandaker Delwar Hossain condemned the attack on his party workers and demanded arrest of the attackers.BNP leaders including lawmaker Mostafa Ali, Bogra Municipality Mayor Mahabubur Rahman and Lalmonirhat Municipality Mayor Mosharraf Hossain Rana blamed cadres of local AL lawmaker Zunaid Ahmed Pallab for the attack.

Zunaid, however, denied the allegation. "The BNP activists attacked Awami League offices and houses owned by our party leaders and activists, but we showed the highest patience," he told reporters.

Witnesses said activists of Awami League, Chhatra League and Jubo League attacked the buses, minibuses and cars carrying BNP leaders and workers from different northern districts near Singra bus stand at about 11:00am. The BNP men were on their way to attend Chairperson Khaleda Zia's rally in Rajshahi, reports a correspondent from Natore.

The ruling AL men vandalised 50 vehicles. A number of BNP men, including Zakir Hossain, were injured in the sudden attack.

Zakir was admitted to Singra Upazila Health Complex from where he was shifted to Bogra Shaheed Zia Medical College Hospital. He succumbed to his injuries on the way, Sherpur police told our staff correspondent in Bogra.

After being attacked, at one stage the BNP men made a counter-attack on the AL activists. They also set fire to at least 12 houses and shops owned by AL activists in the upazila, said police and witnesses.The injured include BNP lawmaker Mostafa Ali Mukul, Bogra Chhatra Dal Vice-President Hasanuzzaman Polash and Singra Police Station's Officer-in-Charge Abul Kalam Azad.

The injured policeman and several others were rushed to Singra Upazila Health Complex while others were admitted to different local clinics and hospitals in Bogra.Singra police rushed to the spot and fired a few teargas shells to bring the situation under control.Rapid Action Battalion and police personnel were deployed in Singra to avert further untoward incident.
 
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] America’s first Muslim country and western singer Kareem Salama



 way too funny!!! whats next in the pipeline! hee haw

 

"I wanna put a boot in their a**, too, and I think most Muslims want to put a boot in their a**," he said of the 2001 jet hijackers.

 

 

US sends America's first Muslim country singer on Middle East tour

James Reinl, United Nations Correspondent

May 05. 2010 8:38PM UAE / May 5. 2010 4:38PM GMT 

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100506/FOREIGN/705059948/1135/commentary

 

The US Muslim country and western singer Kareem Salama will be touring the Middle East. \

 

NEW YORK // Singing country music songs from beneath the brim of a cowboy hat with a full-bore Southern drawl, the up-and-coming performer Kareem Salama breaks the expectations audiences may have of an Egyptian-American Muslim.

 

At least that is the message the US state department hopes to make by sending "America's first Muslim country singer" on a month-long tour from Morocco to Bahrain, designed to improve Washington's dented reputation across the Middle East.

 

"I want to learn from the people we meet, share my music, share my personal experiences and break some stereotypes and preconceived ideas about being an American Muslim," Salama said.

 

"And if I can introduce country music – that's cool, too."

 

Salama is doubtless a patriotic American, describing his "land called paradise" in a peppy pop-country anthem and lauding the way men politely tilted hats to his headscarf-wearing mother as she strolled around rodeos during his childhood.

 

The 32-year-old singer is the product of two US-educated engineers who emigrated from Egypt to raise a family in a mosque-less, rural Oklahoma town of Southern Baptists that Salama describes as being "99.9 per cent white".

 

Country music was not the obvious genre for an Arab-American to achieve commercial success, being associated with a conservative, "Bible Belt America" that saw fit to torch Dixie Chicks albums after singer Natalie Maines criticised George W Bush before the invasion of Iraq.

 

Another example of country music's rage came in after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington when Toby Keith pledged in his hit Angry American to "put a boot in your a** … It's the American way".

 

But Salama defends the musical genre, describing his homeland as an "inclusive country that welcomes newcomers" of all faiths – while advocating his own policy of turning the other cheek in songs such as Generous Peace.

 

"I wanna put a boot in their a**, too, and I think most Muslims want to put a boot in their a**," he said of the 2001 jet hijackers. "The problem is when you say it that way and get a crowd going, then it can spin off into a tribal, vigilante thing."

 

Colombia Barrosse, the director of the state department's division of cultural programmes in the bureau of educational and cultural affairs, describes the rising country star as an embodiment of "the American dream".

 

She describes a "very expensive" tour across Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Israel and Jordan hailing from this year's budget of US$11.5 million (Dh42m) – itself lamentably small but still an increase from last year's $8.5m.

 

Directing cultural diplomacy and so-called "soft power" towards the region has topped priorities since the US president Barack Obama's Cairo speech last June and the promise of a "new beginning" in US relations with the Muslim world.

 

While American arts patrons praise the Obama administration for increasing funding for such cross-cultural ventures, they complain that cash shortages still hinder their efforts to build bridges between East and West.

 

According to Vishakha Desai, the president of the New York-based Asia Society, "the arts have a way to humanise and create a more nuanced understanding" of others that is needed to ease tensions between the Muslim world and the United States.

 

She complains that cross-cultural arts projects, such as last year's Muslim Voices expo – which brought Kuwaiti actors, Sufi musicians and whirling dervishes to entertain Brooklyn crowds – was scaled back because of cash shortfalls.

 

"There isn't enough funding," she said. "Money remains a huge issue. Even under the current administration with its tremendous interest in using arts and culture to advance public diplomacy, the truth is, there isn't enough support."

 

Margaret Ayers, the president of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, criticises Washington's cultural chiefs for allocating "less than one per cent" of their budget on exchanges, harking back to a Cold War era in which the US lavished billions on arts outreach to stymie Communist expressionism.

 

Performers who have benefited from US cultural spending laud the results, with members of the New York-based indie band ZeroBridge still visibly elated from their week-long musical tour of Moroccan villages in July.

 

Mohsin Mohi-ud-Din, 25, the band's drummer, whose Muslim parents traded Kashmir for Maryland, says his preconceptions were challenged when he saw Moroccan "girls with their heads covered, rocking in Iron Maiden and Nirvana T-shirts, throwing up the metal sign".

 

Likewise, he sought to challenge the conception among Moroccans that US Muslims languish under Islamophobic oppression, saying: "Muslims have more freedom in America than they do in most Arab nations – and we weren't afraid to show that."

 

Although it remains unclear whether his audience will be convinced, Salama hopes to deliver a similar message about "American-style freedom" when strutting around Middle Eastern concert halls and universities in cowboy boots over coming weeks.

 

"My presence there demonstrates that fact about America: that, for better or worse, I do have the right to say what I want," he said. "That nobody's going to tell me what to say; and if I said that to the president of the United States, that would be fine."

 

jreinl@thenational.ae

 



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Re: [ALOCHONA] FW: Maulana Waris Mazhari: Can Islam and Secularism Dialogue With Each Other?



Please friends read a new book publishing from New Mexico by a Bangali American
THE WALL OF MIRROR
Beyond Human Religion
 
 
The concept has been receiving through out the readers. A good book to change about the diversity of religions. Be open-minded.

 


From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 16:23:55
Subject: [ALOCHONA] FW: Maulana Waris Mazhari: Can Islam and Secularism Dialogue With Each Other?

 

               A realistic view with some sensible observations.  Personally, I would not have put secularism as a separate entity from Islam, especially in the Indian context.  Packaging 'secularism' as a religion-denying stance is a colonially motivated "European Enlightenment" stunt. Our deshi fundamentalists love such stunt-baji, it suits their lie-machines to the tee.
 
               Farida Majid 
 
              
 


Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:44:32 -0700
 Maulana Waris Mazhari: Can Islam and Secularism Dialogue With Each Other?

Can Islam and Secularism Dialogue With Each Other?

By Maulana Waris Mazhari

(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)

 

The question of whether or not there can be a dialogue between Islam and secularism is a particularly pertinent one today. Many Muslims, including the vast majority of ulema and Islamists, believe that these ideologies are polar opposites. Hence, they insist, there is no possibility of arriving at even a minimum consensus between the two.

Yet, the question of dialogue between Islam and secularism remains one of particular importance, especially in the context of the rights of Muslims living as minorities in non-Muslim-majority countries. Numerous non-Muslim scholars and even some noted Muslim intellectuals (such as the Pakistani writer Mubarak Ali, the Indian Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, and the late Professor Mushirul Haq) complain that where Muslims are in a majority, they brand secularism as 'anti-Islamic' and a threat to Islam and its followers, but where they are in a minority, they regard it as a blessing. Furthermore, where they are in a minority, they seem to argue for a secular state but, at the same time, insist that Muslims must remain safe from secularism.

These intellectual contradictions, which abound in our ulema and Islamist circles, must be resolved if we are not to be accused of double-standards. It is primarily the responsibility of the ulema and other 'lovers of Islam' to address this task with the urgency it deserves. 

To cite an instance of such intellectual sophistry, in several of his Urdu works a noted, recently-deceased, Indian Islamic scholar described secularism in India as a 'shady tree' that must be protected and strengthened. At the same time, in his copious Arabic writings, aimed at Arab scholars and readers, he decried secularism in no uncertain terms. The same sort of contradiction may be observed, to an even greater degree, in the case of the ideologues and activists of the Jamaat-e Islami of India. Those of them who consider any minor departure from the thought of the Jamaat's founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, to be damaging to Islam itself agree wholeheartedly with Maududi's claim of secularism being a form of 'infidelity' (kufr). To my mind, these  people are victims of a pathetic form of personality- worship and literalism.

On the other hand are some other individuals also influenced by Maududi's thought, but who, after sixty years or so of lambasting secularism and hoping in vain for establishing in India what Maududi termed 'Divine Government' (hukumat-e ilahiya) or the Islamic Caliphate, have only just begun to realize that this utterly fanciful agenda is proving to be seriously counter-productive, creating immense hurdles in the path of Islamic missionary work and in the struggle for the rights of religious minorities, including Muslims, in India. It is striking to note here that these people have been compelled to accept secularism as the best available option. Theirs is not a choice willingly made, but one which they feel themselves forced, almost against their will, to accept because they realize that in India they have no other realistic option—the only alternative to a secular state in India being a Hindu state. This dualism in their thought is both a product as well as an indicator of the utter confusion and chaos that characterises contemporary Muslim political thought.

In this regard, the question must be raised that if such people do not willingly accept secularism or actually believe in it, but have been forced by circumstance (the fact of Muslims being in a minority in India) to pay lip-service to it, how far can they truly be loyal to a system based on secularism? How far can they help such a system if they have chosen to support secularism out of compulsion and not out of choice and conviction?

The emotionally- driven slogans of these people clamoring for what they call 'Divine Government' and the Caliphate in India have given added ammunition to anti-Muslim Hindutva forces in the country. Thus, in an interview given to the Urdu weekly Friday Special, the top BJP leader and former Home Minister Murli Manohar Joshi argued that if the Jamaat-e islami could talk of establishing an Islamic state in India, there was nothing wrong if the RSS demanded that India be declared a Hindu state.

It is an undeniable fact that Muslim religious leaders have grossly misunderstood the meaning of secularism in its true sense. They see secularism as wholly opposed to religion. This is reflected in the general tendency in Urdu circles to translate secularism as 'irreligiousness' (la-diniyat). This is completely incorrect. In actual fact, secularism does not imply anti-religiousness. Rather, it simply means that the state follows a policy of non-interference in the religious affairs of all its citizens.

There are two basic factors for the extremely erroneous understanding and interpretation of secularism in Islamic circles. One of these is the prevalence of a very narrow and restricted understanding of Islam. The second is the tendency to equate secularism with a certain strand of Western secularism that seeks not just to remove keep religion out of politics but also to uproot religion from society and from people's lives.  However, the fact remains that there is not just one form of secularism. Rather, it can be understood, interpreted, expressed and practically implemented diversely and in an expansive and flexible manner. Thus, for instance, a noted Arab scholar, Abdul Wahhab Masiri, speaks of two types of secularism. The first is what he calls 'total secularism' or 'comprehensive secularism (al-ilmaniya ash-shamila), and the other 'partial secularism' (al-ilmaniya al-juziya). The former does not have any place at all for religion in the lives of individuals and society, while the latter provides for religion to be kept apart from politics, especially in plural societies, where this is the only practicable solution.

Theocratic rule is a notion that is foreign in Islam, which has no room for priesthood. According to the famous Egyptian Islamic scholar, Mufti Muhammad Abduh, an Islamic government is a 'civil government' (al-dawlah al-madaniya). A 'civil government', he explains, is one that is established on the basis of human welfare and works for this purpose, keeping in mind the comprehensive interests of its citizens. In a similar vein, the noted thirteenth century Islamic scholar Izz Ibn Abdus Salam wrote in his Qawaid al-Ahkam, 'The aim of the shariah is to put an end to evil and strife and their causes and to promote the interests [of people] and the causes thereof.' He further added, 'People's interests as well as evils and strife and the causes thereof are indentified through human experience, customs and [other] reliable means.' This suggests the importance of human experience in devising structures, processes, and policies of governance.

It is not true to claim, as many Islamist ideologues and ulema do, that the 'Righteous Caliphate', the period of the first four Sunni Caliphs, has elaborated, expressed and fixed for all time all the features and details of Islamic government and governance. It is well-known that Abu Bakr nominated Umar as his successor, while the latter set up a committee of six persons to decide his successor. Obviously, this indicates, the methods of choosing a leader can differ according to the context.

The 'Righteous Caliphate' lasted, in practical terms, for a very short period of only thirty years. Undoubtedly, this system of governance was based on social justice and human welfare. However, to consider it the final Islamic model would mean accepting the argument that this model could not be realistically applied in later stages of history, and that it was rendered incapable of being applied after a short period of three decades.

Certain indispensable modifications in the concept of Islamic government had to be made in the early Islamic period itself, and this was accepted at both the ideological as well as practical levels. For instance, the later ulema and Islamic commentators rebutted the literal import of hadith reports that suggested that the Caliph must be from the tribe of Quraish. Likewise, the notion that there must be a single Caliph for Imam for the entire Islamic world was also negated. The noted twentieth century Indian Muslim thinker Allama Muhammad Iqbal went to the extent of claiming in his acclaimed magnum opus Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam that in today's world a single Muslim ummah simply does not exist. Rather, he argued, the world's Muslims consist of several different communities, and recognized that it was difficult for all of them to form a single commonwealth.

From this discussion, it clearly emerges that human experience plays a major role in the construction of the state structures. New human experiences emerge with changing times and conditions, and these need to be incorporated in crafting patterns and processes of governance, contrary to what doctrinaire Islamists and ulema might argue. This is also indicated in the Quran, which speaks of monarchy as being a blessing from God (5: 20) although in today we are all aware of the pitfalls of this form of governance. In this regard, all we can say is that monarchy was more suited to the context and times this particular verse of the Quran referred to, although for today democracy is for more preferable.

A vital basis for dialogue between Islam and secularism, and evidence that such dialogue is indeed acceptable in terms of the shariah, is the polity established in Medina by the Prophet. The Constitution of this polity was, in a sense, based on the same princples that secularism (in its widely-accepted Indian sense) is founded on—equality and respect for the religious freedom of all communities. The leading ulema of the Deoband school, it is instructive to note, invoked the Constitution of Medina to legitimize their role in their struggle for a united and free India.

The noted Deobandi scholar Maulana Saeed Ahmad Akbaradi was of the view that there was no contradiction between Islam and secularism, as understood in its particular Indian sense. This approach to both secularism and Islam, I believe, is the only practicable one for plural societies today, and can serve as a firm basis for a meaningful dialogue between Islam and secularism, and between believing Muslims and secularists.

 

Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates' Association of the Deoband madrasa. He can be contacted on w.mazhari@gmail. com

 

Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.

 

 

 

 




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[ALOCHONA] Learn Arabic for Free at University of Qatar



Don't miss this opportunity 
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Deadline to apply is May 31st.




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[ALOCHONA] The elite Background of Faisal Shazhad



The elite Background of Faisal Shazhad the alleged terrorist involved in the attempted bombing at Times Square . What follows are comments by my friend Dr. Omar Ali and a friend of his. I share some of Omar's dark mood at this moment. The articles that follow are what has appeared in a variety of newspapers on Shahzad today.

 

 

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: omar ali
Sent: May 5, 2010 6:29 AM
To: asiapeace , abdalian@yahoogroups.com, crdp@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Pakistan_Futures@yahoogroups.com,

Subject: Asiapeace (ACHA) Fw: Re.:View: Let us seize this opportunity & Profile: Faisal Shah

 

The issue actually goes much deeper than that. Islamic supremacism is not that different from Christian evangelism, Hindu revivalism or those Japanese rightwingers who go around in loudspeaker vans appealing to the emperor to restore Japanese honor and for everyone else to prepare to commit hara kiri. The real difference is at the top of the heap. The people running India, Japan and the USA are cynical, manipulative, greedy, whatever (after all, the CIA financed Islamic revivalism for decades), but they seem to have a vague grip on reality (and what human can hope for more than that?). Their worldview accomodates science and change. The same is true even of the Iranian Mullahs and the Saudi Royal family.
 
But in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the lunatics took over the asylum. Maybe it was the reverse selection procedures of the Pak army (selecting the dumbest people to become generals), maybe it was a result of the original millenarian fever that erupted at partition (look up millenarian on wikipedia btw and you will not find partition listed there as an example, just goes to show that even our advanced culture has its blind spots), maybe it was just one of those things that happen in history, but for the last 30 years, THE STATE in Pakistan has been an active participant in this lunacy and the ideology has taken hold. Sons of air marshals are dreaming of setting off bombs in public places. That just takes the biscuit. I dont know what to say.
 
On a purely western and academic left wing blog, where no contrary opinion can sneak in, I would actually blame the CIA and orientalism and colonialism (not necessarily in that order) and go to sleep a happy man, but even in that echo chamber things are starting to fall apart. Where will this go next, Allah alone knows for sure, we can only hazard a guess.
 
My guess: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. So I expect the state deparment to pass out more money to GHQ, I expect the CIA to fund some new insane lunatic fringe to counter their last lunatic fringe, I expect the pentagon to ask for more money for weapons and a good hard "shock and awe campaign", I expect professors in san francisco to blame colonialism, and I expect Islamists to blow themselves up with even greater devotion. In short, more of the same. Not really. I am just not in a good mood. Send me your comments. I will try more serious predictions next time.

Omar
 

--- On Wed, 5/5/10, Kirfani wrote:


From: Kirfani
Subject: Re.Fwd. Asiapeace Fwd:View: Let us seize this opportunity & Profile: Faisal Shah
To: Kirfani

Date: Wednesday, May 5, 2010, 7:54 AM

 
It has been a fast unfolding story. Until more facts come out, I am  also waiting for knee-jerk defenders' foaming and frothing rebuttals from the subscribers to a pathological and collective state of denial and delusion by the supremacist and absolutist holders of 'conspiracy theories', based on ubiquitous, deeply held and well entrenched mind set re "yahood-o- hunood-o nisaara'  [judeo-christian-hindu] world wide conspiracy. Such theories are the last resort of the defeated and a defeatist mind set which makes them blind to their own chronic and historic shortcomings
 
Shahzad was not a product of refugee camps in the war torn tribal areas, but of a privileged background, a highly educated individual with a highly educated wife, two young children, and his father a retired former Air Vice Marshal of Pakistan air force. Perhaps Muslims should use some introspection and heed Shahzad's failed terrorist act as a wake up call.and start looking in the mirror for the real face of the pervasive sympathy for any act of terrorism emanating from the so called ummah, whether to kill and maim the unsuspecting  civilian innocents in Pakistan or those in the Time Square, New York. And stop pointing fingers at others and look within for the inhumanity breeding inside the their own mosques and madrassahs all in the name of a mutant and deviant Islam divorced from empathy for the humanity of others, be they Muslims or Non-Muslims.
 
-Kalim

Faisal Shahzad's father vacates Peshawar house

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Javed Aziz Khan & Mushtaq Paracha

The News, Pakistan

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=237595

 

PESHAWAR/NOWSHERA: Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq, father of Faisal Shahzad, the accused in New York's failed bomb plot, hurriedly vacated the family home in Hayatabad town here late Tuesday apparently to avoid attention.

 

Eyewitnesses said he packed some belongings in a vehicle and left the house located in Phase IV of the posh Hayatabad town along with male and female members of the family. Their destination wasn't known.

 

Earlier, members of the media, in particularly TV crews had converged on the house in a bid to talk to family members and learn more about Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested Tuesday in the US on charges of plotting the vehicle bomb attack and now accused of an attempted act of terrorism. However, nobody in Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq's household or the neighbours were ready to talk to reporters. A Geo TV reporter was shown outside the house trying to engage in conversation with neighbours. Some people in the neighbourhood expressed ignorance about Faisal Shahzad's arrest in the US.

 

Air Vice Marshal Baharul Haq retired from the Pakistan Air Force some years ago. Maj Gen (R) Tajul Haq, reported to be his brother, served as the Inspector General of Frontier Corps (IGFC) in the past.

 

A reporter of The News and Geo TV also paid a visit to the family's village, Mohib Banda, near Pabbi in Nowshera district and met some relatives of Faisal Shahzad. They were largely unaware of the happenings in the US and some of them felt Faisal Shahzad had been trapped in the case under some conspiracy.

 

Enquiries revealed that Faisal Shahzad is married with two children. His Pakistani identity card was made in Karachi as he had a job there some years ago. It was learnt that he had come to the village some months ago with his wife and children to attend a wedding.

 

Sareerul Haq, a cousin of Faisal Shahzad and nephew of Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq, said he could not believe the allegations against his cousin. He pointed out that Faisal Shahzad had gone to the US for studies.

 

Sareerul Haq is living in the village house owned by Faisal Shahzad's family. He said the house hasn't been mortgaged as stated by interior minister Rahman Malik. Jabir Khan, another cousin of Faisal Shahzad, insisted that Faisal was innocent. He said it was a conspiracy against his cousin to charge him for committing act of terror. Nazeer, another villager from Mohib Banda, said he was a childhood friend of Faisal Shahzad. "I don't think Faisal had links with any militant group," he stressed.

 

Times Square bomb: Pakistanis puzzled by bomber's motives

Pakistanis want to know what turned a bright, well-educated middle-class man with a US passport into a jihadi warrior

Declan Walsh in Karachi

The Guardian

Wednesday 5 May 2010

 

A wizened, scraggly bearded man with a lazy eye peered through an ajar door at the Batkha mosque in Karachi. Did he know Faisal Shahzad, the would-be New York bomber? "No, never heard of him," he said, blocking the door.

 

What about Muhammad Rehan, Shahzad's friend who had been picked up by Pakistani intelligence as he left morning prayers at the mosque the day before? "I saw nothing of the sort," he insisted. Across the street, traders selling vegetables and scrawny chickens were similarly unhelpful. "No, didn't see a thing," said one, whisking away the flies.

 

The curious silence at the mosque, which has links to sectarian extremist groups, may have been explained by the intelligence men who loitered on the street, monitoring all comings and going.

 

In Pakistan a great silence has descended on everyone associated with Shahzad, the 30-year-old former financial analyst who tried to blow up a car on Times Square on Saturday, and is now in US custody. His friends have melted away; his relatives have abandoned their homes; and several people, including his father-in-law, have been picked up for questioning.

 

A senior police officer in Nazimabad, a bustling middle-class neighbourhood where the Batkha mosque is located, said he had no information about those arrested. "It's entirely an intelligence job," he said. "We are told nothing."

 

The cloud of secrecy is being orchestrated by American and Pakistani investigators trying to collect as much information as they can about Faisal Shahzad. But it makes it harder to answer the central mystery of the affair: why would a well-heeled and highly educated young Pakistani from a privileged background, who had just gained an American passport, want to throw it all away on an ill-conceived and ruthless escapade?

 

Part of the answer may be found in Karachi, the sprawling port city of 16 million people. Shahzad spent part of his formative years here, as the privileged son of a former air force officer. From 1995 to 1998 his father, Bahar ul-Haq, served as deputy director of Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority, according to a spokesman for the organisation.

 

Karachi's slums are awash with militant groups of many hues but the teenage Shahzad lived in some luxury – a comfortable, two-storey house close to the city airport, with palm trees in the garden and bougainvillea spilling over the wall. A woman answering the phone said it was occupied by the CAA deputy director.

 

Aged 19, Shahzad left the city in 1998 for the US, where he studied computer science and then business at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Last year, after 11 years in the US, he appeared to have embraced the American way. He had a job as a financial analyst, he had an American wife of Pakistani descent, a tidy suburban house and two children.

 

Photos of his wife, Huma Mian, suggest a bright, sophisticated young woman who wore tight jeans, spoke French as well as Urdu, and watched Friends on television. She shared the humdrum concerns of any other young mother; her Facebook profile lists her "activities" as: "Changing Diapers, Feeding Milk, Wiping Drools, Being Sleep Deprived."

 

Then something changed. A few months after becoming a US citizen, Shahzad left his job, defaulted on his mortgage repayments, and, last June, travelled to Pakistan as part of a five-month journey outside the US when he appears to have transformed into a would-be jihadi killer.

 

Details of the Pakistan trip remain sketchy but his first stop was Karachi, where he hooked up with Muhammad Ramzan – now in ISI custody – hired a van and drove to Peshawar, the frontier city on the verge of the war-torn tribal belt.

 

By then Shahzad's parents, who hail from a village near Peshawar, had retired to a house in Hayatabad, the city's most expensive neighbourhood. But Shahzad went further. Since being arrested on Monday night, he has allegedly told investigators that he had travelled to Waziristan, the hub of Taliban and al-Qaida operations, for bomb-making classes.

 

A Pakistani official said he went to North Waziristan, the militant stronghold where Hakimullah Mehsud, the Tehrik-e-Taliban leader who surfaced this week after surviving a US drone strike, is believed to be hiding.

 

The details are murky. It remains unclear who Shahzad met, who provided training and whether it was co-ordinated by Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

Shahzad has reportedly claimed to be a "lone wolf", working alone; Pakistan's chief military spokesman said the Taliban claim should be taken with a "pinch of salt". "It's questionable whether the organisation has that kind of reach," said Major General Athar Abbas.

 

But the question that troubles many Pakistanis is what motivated Shahzad, a professional middle-class Pakistani with a seemingly bright future – to make the journey into the tribal belt in the first place.

 

"The answer is not easy," said Sharfuddin Memon, former chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee in Karachi. "When poor people from the villages end up in madrasas run by conservative preachers, we call them the breeding grounds of extremism. But somebody who has lived abroad, is well educated, and should know wrong and right – its hard to tell why," he said.

 

May 4, 2010

From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect

By JAMES BARRON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

New York Times

 

They took their places in the wood-paneled courtroom, 58 people from 32 countries. They listened as a federal magistrate banged the gavel and said it was "a wonderful day for the United States"— the day they would become Americans.

 

The magistrate talked about Thomas Jefferson and told the group that they could run for office — only the presidency and the vice presidency were off limits, according to a tape recording of the proceedings in a Bridgeport, Conn., courtroom last year, on April 17. On her instructions, they raised their right hands and repeated the oath of citizenship.

 

One man in the group was the Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, whose father or grandfather was a Pakistani military official and who, at 29, had spent a decade in the United States, collecting a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and landing a job with a Connecticut financial marketing company.

 

He had obtained citizenship through marriage to a woman who was born in Colorado — the authorities say she and their two young children are still in Pakistan, where they believe he was trained in making bombs last year in Waziristan, a tribal area that is a haven for militants.

 

On Saturday, the authorities said, Mr. Shahzad drove a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives and detonators, leaving it in Times Square.

 

About 7 p.m., as a robot from the bomb squad was being summoned to the S.U.V., Mr. Shahzad called his landlord from the train to Connecticut and said he had lost his keys; in a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, the authorities said the keys had been locked inside the Pathfinder.

 

The landlord met him at the apartment that night to let him in. "He looked nervous," said the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, who had rented him a two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport since Feb. 15. "But I thought, of course he's nervous, he just lost his keys."

 

In nearly a dozen years in this country, Mr. Shahzad had gone to school, held steady jobs, bought and sold real estate, and kept his immigration status in good order, giving no sign to those he interacted with that he had connections to terrorists in Pakistan. Nor was there any indication that he would try to wreak havoc in one of the world's most crowded places, Times Square.

 

His neighbors in Connecticut said the things neighbors always say about someone who suddenly turns up in the headlines — he was quiet, he was polite, he went jogging late at night. Like so many others, he lost a house to foreclosure — a real estate broker who helped him buy the house, in Shelton, Conn., in 2004 remembered that Mr. Shahzad did not like President George W. Bush or the Iraq war.

 

"I didn't take it for much," said the broker, Igor Djuric, "because around that time not many people did."

 

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply "checking everything out."

 

Mr. Shahzad was born in Pakistan in 1979, though there is some confusion over where. Officials in Pakistan said it was in Nowshera, an area in northern Pakistan known for its Afghan refugee camps. But on a university application that Mr. Shahzad had filled out and that was found in the maggot-covered garbage outside the Shelton house on Tuesday, he listed Karachi.

 

Pakistani officials said Mr. Shahzad was either a son or a grandson of Baharul Haq, who retired as a vice air marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority.

 

A Pakistani official said Mr. Shahzad might have had affiliations with Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant linked to Al Qaeda who was formerly associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an anti-India militant group once nurtured by the Pakistani state. But friends said the family was well respected and nonpolitical.

 

"Neither Faisal nor his family has ever had any links with any jihadist or religious organization," one friend said. Another, a lawyer, said that "the family is in a state of shock," adding, "They believe that their son has been implicated in a fake case."

 

Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as "Kashmiri."

 

Mr. Shahzad's generation grew up in a Pakistan where alcohol had been banned and Islam had been forced into schools and communities as a doctrine and a national glue.

 

"It's not that they don't speak English or aren't skilled," a Pakistani official explained. "But in their hearts and in their minds they reject the West. They can't see a world where they live together; there's only one way, one right way."

 

According to immigration officials, Mr. Shahzad arrived in the United States on Jan. 16, 1999, less than a month after he had been granted a student visa, which requires a criminal background check.

 

He had previously attended a program in Karachi affiliated with the now-defunct Southeastern University in Washington; a transcript from the spring of 1998, found in the garbage outside the Shelton house, showed that he got D's in English composition and microeconomics, B's in Introduction to Accounting and Introduction to Humanities, and a C in statistics.

 

He enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, where he received a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering in 2000, followed by a master's in business administration in 2005.

 

"If this hadn't happened I would have long forgotten him," said William Greenspan, Mr. Shahzad's adviser as an undergraduate. "There are a lot of students you get to know; they call you up once in awhile to say hello, they got a nice job. After he left U.B., I never heard anything from him."

 

In January 2002 Mr. Shahzad obtained an H1B visa, a coveted status meant for highly skilled workers and good for three years, with a possible extension. Records show that Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetics giant, applied for a visa for Mr. Shahzad; he worked there as a temporary clerk in the accounting department in 2001, through an employment agency called Accountants Inc., according to a timecard found in his trash.

 

Officials at the cosmetic company confirmed that they hired Mr. Shahzad to work in the accounting department at the Stamford, Conn., office on Jan. 31, 2002; he left on June 14, 2006 to join another company. In 2006, Mr. Shahzad took a job as a junior financial analyst at Affinion Group in Norwalk, a financial marketing services company. Michael Bush, the company's director of public relations, said Mr. Shahzad resigned in mid-2009; government officials said he was unemployed and bankrupt by the time of his arrest.

 

After his marriage, to Huma Mian, he petitioned the immigration agency in 2004 to change his status; he wanted to become a permanent resident, another step on the path to citizenship.

 

Ms. Mian had just graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a business degree, according to Bronson Hilliard, a university spokesman. She lived in dormitories and in family housing, sharing her quarters with a sister or a cousin, Mr. Hilliard said.

 

Her parents lived in the Denver suburb of Aurora. A neighbor in their condominium complex, Johnny Wright, remembered that her new husband had visited the family only once before she joined him.

 

"He seemed educated," Mr. Wright said. "Didn't make a lot of conversation."

 

The Mians moved out in 2008, leaving a post office box overseas as a forwarding address. Meanwhile, Mr. Shahzad applied for citizenship that October.

 

Shortly after his naturalization ceremony in the Bridgeport courthouse, his name appeared on a case in another Connecticut court, a foreclosure action by Chase bank.

 

He and his wife had bought a newly built single-family house on Long Hill Avenue in Shelton in 2004 for $273,000, with a $218,400 mortgage, according to court papers.

 

They tried to cash in on the real estate boom, listing it for sale for $329,000 in 2006. It did not sell, said Frank DelVecchio, an agent who picked up the listing in 2008. The price then was $299,000. Later it was marked down to $285,000, and finally, $284,500.

 

In Shelton, neighbors remembered Mr. Shahzad's walking early in the morning in sandals and loose-fitting shirts, and jogging late at night in black athletic clothes; his wife wore a long dress and a shawl covering her hair. They had toys in their garage and a little swimming pool in the back; last summer, friends went over for barbecues.

 

"He wasn't unfriendly," said Debbie Bussolari, a 55-year-old dental technician who lives across the street. "He seemed a little different."

 

The family had several tag sales last summer, offering knickknacks and kid stuff, "things that you would give to Goodwill," said Mary Ann Galich, 55, who lives behind the house.

 

"She was outside dealing with the people, and he was dealing with the money," Ms. Galich recalled.

 

Davon Reid, 17, who lives next door, said the family moved in December: "It seemed like they picked up everything very quickly." A few months later, a real estate broker let him in to check the place out, and it was a wreck.

 

"There was spoiled food and milk everywhere," he said. "They just left everything. They left clothes in closets, the kids' shoes, the woman's shoes. And the kids' toys."

 

Three months ago, Mr. Shahzad signed a one-year lease on the two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport. Mr. Chomiak, the landlord, said he usually saw Mr. Shahzad only when the rent was due, but he described him as a nice guy who furnished the apartment sparsely, and said he made a living selling jewelry in New Haven.

 

Other details took on significance in light of the arrest. When Mr. Chomiak went looking for Mr. Shahzad on Monday, he noticed a distributor cap and two small bags of fertilizer in the garage.

 

Mr. Shahzad, Mr. Chomiak said, mentioned that he wanted to grow tomatoes.

 

Reporting was contributed by Nina Bernstein and Alison Leigh Cowan from New York, and Ray Rivera and Karen Zraick from Connecticut.

 

Correction: May 5, 2010

An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect attribution for the date of Mr. Shahzad's arrival in the United States. It also said that Mr. Shahzad petitioned the immigration agency to change his status in 2004, when in fact his wife did so in 2005.

 

May 4, 2010

A Suspect Leaves Clues at Every Turn

By JIM DWYER

New York Times

 

Here is a quest for the invisible life, rendered in less than 50 words.

 

Buy a used Nissan Pathfinder with cash; decline a bill of sale or any other paperwork; communicate about the deal on a prepaid cellphone, registered to no one. Then strip the vehicle identification number, or VIN, from the dashboard. Add a stolen license plate. Tint the windows.

 

And here, it seems, is the very definition of futility.

 

These were the tactics that prosecutors say were used by Faisal Shahzad, the man pulled off a plane late Monday night and charged with trying to blow up the Pathfinder in Times Square on Saturday evening, when tens of thousands of people were jammed into the streets.

 

It was the precise map of the fanatic heart drawn by Yeats: Great hatred, little room.

 

At virtually every turn, the evasive steps Mr. Shahzad took left digital footprints, a trail that ultimately led to his seat on an Emirates flight that was bound for Dubai, the authorities say. Mr. Shahzad did not make it into court on Tuesday; he is said to be talking, and the authorities seemed unwilling to interrupt the stream of his consciousness.

 

If Mr. Shahzad is indeed responsible, he would not be the first car-bombing suspect arrested in a matter of days because of the things he left behind. With every breath of modern life, people leave a vast series of markings that are unseen and, usually, unnoticed.

 

Nearly two decades ago, the first — and so far, only successful — car bomb in the modern history of New York was planted in the basement garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993. Six people were killed. The explosion left an immense crater.

 

Climbing through the rubble a few days later, Joe Hanlin, a federal explosives investigator, and Donald Sadowy, a detective with the Police Department's bomb squad, found bits and pieces of a vehicle that had been torn apart, including a severely twisted section of the frame. That section appeared to have been quite close to the explosion. As they began to swab it for chemical residue, a series of raised dots emerged. They formed letters and numbers.

 

"We couldn't read all the numbers," Mr. Hanlin testified later that year, "but we knew they were numbers and could be used to trace the vehicle."

 

It turned out that particular fragment had been stamped with the vehicle's 17-digit VIN, the automotive equivalent of DNA. Each vehicle is assigned a unique series of numbers that shows where it was manufactured and when, and describes in code its body type, make, model, options.

 

The VIN showed that the demolished vehicle had been a Ford Econoline van, owned by the Ryder Truck and Rental Company, which reported that it had been rented a few weeks earlier in Jersey City by a man named Mohammed A. Salameh.

 

In fact, by the time the van was linked to the bombing, Mr. Salameh had already reported it stolen. While others who were part of the bomb plot had fled the country, Mr. Salameh was left behind, nearly penniless. As federal investigators descended on the rental company, Mr. Salameh was haggling with Ryder for the return of a $400 deposit.

 

ON Saturday, when police seized the Nissan Pathfinder left in Times Square, the VIN plate on the dashboard had been removed. But the VIN is also stamped on engine parts and on the frame, and these were intact. That identification quickly led to a 19-year-old Connecticut woman who had sold the Pathfinder a few weeks ago to a man for $1,300 in cash.

 

The man who bought it had declined the offer of a bill of sale. He had, however, called the seller several times from the prepaid cellphone to arrange the purchase, according to a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday.

 

That same phone had been used for calls to and from a "Pakistani telephone number associated with Shahzad," the complaint said.

 

With Mr. Shahzad's name, investigators searched his home in Connecticut on Monday, and solved another tiny mystery: The police had found keys in the Pathfinder, and one of them opened the door to Mr. Shahzad's home. In his garage, they found fertilizer and fireworks, similar to what had been left in the Pathfinder in Times Square.

 

Later that night, in a seat on board Emirates Flight 202, they found Faisal Shahzad.

 

Another invisible man, thwarted by a VIN.

 

 

May 4, 2010

Lapses Allowed Suspect to Board Plane

By SCOTT SHANE

New York Times

 

WASHINGTON — Why was Faisal Shahzad permitted to board a flight for Dubai some 24 hours after investigators of the Times Square terrorism case learned he might be connected to the attempted bombing?

 

Though Mr. Shahzad was stopped before he could fly away, there were at least two significant lapses in the security response of the government and the airline that allowed him to come close to making his escape, officials of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies said on Tuesday.

 

First, an F.B.I. surveillance team that had found Mr. Shahzad in Connecticut lost track of him — it is not clear for how long — before he drove to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, the officials said. As a result, investigators did not know he was planning to fly abroad until a final passenger list was sent to officials at the federal Customs and Border Protection agency minutes before takeoff.

 

In addition, the airline he was flying, Emirates, failed to act on an electronic message at midday on Monday notifying all carriers to check the no-fly list for an important added name, the officials said. That meant lost opportunities to flag him when he made a reservation and paid for his ticket in cash several hours before departure.

 

Top Obama administration officials and some members of Congress on Tuesday praised the government's handling of the investigation, noting that Mr. Shahzad was identified, tracked and arrested before he could escape.

 

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, while saying he was reluctant to criticize those in charge of airport security, added: "Clearly the guy was on the plane and shouldn't have been. We got lucky."

 

Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, said she applauded the work of law enforcement officials in quickly solving the case. Still, she added, "A key question for me is why this suspect was allowed to board the plane in the first place. There appears to be a troubling gap between the time they had his name and the time he got on the plane."

 

At a news conference in Washington, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that despite the break in physical surveillance, he had never been concerned that Mr. Shahzad would get away.

 

"I was here all yesterday and through much of last night, and was aware of the tracking that was going on," Mr. Holder said. "And I was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him."

 

Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, called the capture of the accused terrorist "a great team effort." She added: "The law enforcement work in this case was truly exemplary."

 

While the officials emphasized the successful outcome to the chase, a more detailed account, in interviews with officials who spoke of the continuing investigation mostly on condition of anonymity, gave a mixed picture.

 

On Sunday night, about 24 hours after the smoking Nissan Pathfinder was left on a bustling Manhattan street, investigators identified Mr. Shahzad as the buyer of the car. While the vehicle identification number had been removed from the passenger compartment, a detective found a duplicate number on the engine block.

 

But at that point, officials said, they were uncertain of Mr. Shahzad's role and did not think they had enough evidence to arrest him and charge him with a crime. Instead, they began an urgent manhunt; F.B.I. agents located Mr. Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn., and began to follow him.

 

It remained uncertain Tuesday night at what time Mr. Shahzad had been found and when he was lost. Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, declined to comment on the surveillance issue.

 

But at about 12:30 p.m. on Monday, more certain that Mr. Shahzad was the suspected terrorist, investigators asked the Department of Homeland Security to put him on the no-fly list. Three minutes later, the department sent airlines, including Emirates, an electronic notification that they should check the no-fly list for an update. At about 4:30 p.m., more information was added to the list, including Mr. Shahzad's passport number, officials said.

 

Workers at Emirates evidently did not check the list, because at 6:30 p.m., Mr. Shahzad called the airline and booked a flight to Pakistan via Dubai, officials said. At 7:35 p.m., he arrived at the airport, paid cash for his ticket and was given a boarding pass.

 

Airlines are not required to report cash purchases, a Homeland Security official said. Emirates actually did report Mr. Shahzad's purchase to the Transportation Security Administration — but only hours later, when he was already in custody, the official said.

 

Mr. Shahzad had evaded the surveillance effort and bought his ticket seven hours after his name went on the no-fly list. But the system gives security officials one more chance to stop a dangerous passenger.

 

As is routine, when boarding was completed for the flight, Emirates Flight EK202, the final passenger manifest was sent to the National Targeting Center, operated in Virginia by Customs and Border Protection. There, at about 11 p.m., analysts discovered that Mr. Shahzad was on the no-fly list and had just boarded a plane.

 

They sounded the alarm, and minutes later, with the jet still at the gate, its door was opened and agents came aboard and took Mr. Shahzad into custody, officials said. The airliner then pulled away from the gate but was called back.

 

"Actually I have a message for you to go back to the gate immediately," an air traffic controller told the pilot, according to a recording posted to the Web by LiveATC.net, which tracks air communications. "I don't know exactly why, but you can call your company for the reason," the controller added.

 

After the plane was called back, the authorities removed two more passengers. They were questioned and cleared. They and all the rest of the passengers were rescreened, as was the baggage, and the flight took off about seven hours late.

 

An Emirates spokeswoman, who said she was not allowed to speak on the record, declined to comment on the claims by government officials that the airline had neglected to recheck the no-fly list. "Emirates takes every necessary precaution to ensure the safety and well-being of its passengers and crew and regrets the inconvenience caused," the airline said in a statement.

 

One long-planned change in security procedures may reduce the chances of a repeat failure to check an updated no-fly list, officials said. The Transportation Security Administration is taking over the job of checking passenger manifests against the no-fly list under its Secure Flight program.

 

Such checks are currently being done by the T.S.A. for domestic flights, and the agency is scheduled to be checking all international flights by the end of the year, agency officials said.

 

 

May 4, 2010

Smoking Car to an Arrest in 53 Hours

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and AL BAKER

New York Times

 

The keys found in the ignition of the sport utility vehicle that was left to explode in Times Square on Saturday evening did more than just start cars: one opened the front door to Faisal Shahzad's home.

 

The young woman in Bridgeport who last month sold Mr. Shahzad the rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder prosecutors say he used in the failed attack did not remember his name. But she had his telephone number.

 

That number was traced back to a prepaid cellular phone purchased by Mr. Shahzad, one that received four calls from Pakistan in the hours before he bought the S.U.V.

 

It was 53 hours and 20 minutes from the moment the authorities say Mr. Shahzad, undetected, left his failed car bomb in the heart of Manhattan until the moment he was taken off a plane at Kennedy Airport and charged with trying to kill untold numbers of the city's residents and tourists.

 

"In the real world," said the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whose detectives investigated the case with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "53 is a pretty good number."

 

In the most basic calculus, the success of the investigation of the attempted car bombing in Times Square is measured by the authorities only one way: a suspect was caught and charged, and now faces life in prison if convicted.

 

But based on interviews and court records, those 53 hours included good breaks, dead ends, real scares, plain detective work and high-tech sophistication. There were moments of keen insight, and perhaps fearsome oversight.

 

The police detectives and federal agents of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, for instance, interviewed the occupants of 242 rooms of the Marriott Marquis and 92 staff workers. They spoke to theatergoers from the stages of two Broadway plays to determine if anyone had glimpsed a man fleeing the Pathfinder shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.

 

They did a 24-hour street canvass and fanned out to Pennsylvania and other places to talk to manufacturers of the bomb's components: two clocks, three propane tanks, gas cans, a gun box, M88 firecrackers.

 

But according to several people with knowledge of the investigation, federal agents who had Mr. Shahzad under surveillance lost him at one point, a development that probably allowed him to make it to the airport and briefly board the plane bound for the Middle East.

 

Spokesmen for the F.B.I. in New York and Washington would not comment on any possible lapse in surveillance.

 

If the lapse occurred, it was not final, or fatal. Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, confessed to trying to set off a bomb in Times Square shortly after he was taken off the plane.

 

The route to that capture began in Midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway on a warm night of high drama.

 

At 6:28 p.m. on Saturday, the authorities say Mr. Shahzad steered his newly acquired Pathfinder west on West 45th Street, in Times Square, a move caught on film by a police security camera as it crossed Broadway.

 

He bailed out seconds later. Then a street vendor — wearing an "I love New York T-shirt" — waved down a mounted officer, who saw the white smoke collecting inside the still idling vehicle and made a call that got the bomb squad there by about 7 p.m.

 

It took the bomb squad, according to court papers, eight hours of work simply to render the S.U.V. safe enough to approach. Once the authorities did, they found keys hanging from the ignition. Hours later, after they towed the car to a Queens forensic garage, they found an even more important clue when a police Auto Crime Unit detective crawled underneath the vehicle.

 

"The break in this case took place when a New York City detective was able to go under the vehicle and get the hidden VIN number," Mr. Kelly said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. "This identified the owner of record, who in turn, as we know, sold it to the suspect."

 

It had been something of a feat to get the city's most senior officials to the scene of the attempted bombing.

 

Mr. Kelly had been in Washington, for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, when his cellphone rang. At 8 p.m., he walked over to where his boss, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, was sitting and spread the news. At 10:55 p.m. the two men left, taking the mayor's private jet and touching down at 12:20 a.m. at La Guardia Airport.

 

Fifteen minutes later, the two men, still in fancy suits, were inside a drab storage area of a building on West 44th Street, pulling up folding chairs with police and F.B.I. investigators around a Formica table and reviewing X-ray photos of the Pathfinder's contents.

 

And soon, investigators fanned out to find the driver.

 

All Sunday afternoon, the agents and police searched for the Pathfinder's owner of record — a man they knew had bought it used from a lot in Connecticut. By 6 p.m., they found the man, in Bridgeport. He said it was his daughter they needed.

 

"I give it to her," the man, Lagnes Colas, said in an interview, noting that she had decided to sell it recently so she could get a better car.

 

Within 20 minutes, the investigators were talking with his daughter, Peggy.

 

She said she met on April 24 with a man who answered her online advertisements. He bargained the price down to $1,300 from $1,800, she told investigators. He paid with $100 bills. He looked Middle Eastern or Hispanic. And it was, investigators learned, a strange transaction: one conducted in a supermarket parking lot, without paperwork or receipts, and involving a man who explained that a bill of sale was unnecessary and who seemed uninterested in the vehicle's long-term prospects.

 

Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, "inspected the interior seating and cargo area" but not the engine. He was told the chassis was not in good shape, but he bought it anyway.

 

"I thought maybe he might bring the car back," Mr. Colas said in an interview.

 

The investigative trail was warming up.

 

Later Sunday, a sketch artist was brought in from the Connecticut State Police to work with Ms. Colas on a portrait of the man who had bought the S.U.V. The work was promising.

 

On Monday, police and federal agents were back. Now, they had photographs of six men. She picked out the one of Mr. Shahzad, the court papers said.

 

Meanwhile, officials dug through Verizon Wireless records to learn more about the number she provided, one they found was attached to a prepaid phone activated April 16.

 

Though they declined to say precisely how they tracked such an anonymous number, they established not only that Mr. Shahzad was the buyer of the Pathfinder, but also that he got four phone calls from a Pakistani number associated with him in the hour before he made his final calls to arrange the purchase of the vehicle, according to the papers.

 

But there was more. The records had logged a call made by Mr. Shahzad's disposable cellphone on April 25, the day after he bought the Pathfinder. It was to a rural Pennsylvania fireworks store, "that sells M-88 fireworks," the court papers said.

 

Such fireworks were a part of the bomb in the Pathfinder: the would-be detonator.

 

On Monday, F.B.I. agents spoke to Mr. Shahzad's landlord in Bridgeport, the court papers said. In an interview, the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, 44, said his tenant had signed a one-year lease for a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor around three months ago.

 

"He said he'd recently come from his country," Mr. Chomiak said.

 

Soon after interviewing the landlord on Monday, investigators first "got eyes on" Mr. Shahzad, according to law enforcement officials. He was in another car, one registered in his name, returning to his apartment from the grocery store.

 

Exactly how long investigators had him under surveillance is unclear. But officials said investigators watched him come home and go inside his house. He emerged later to get back in his car, headed south.

 

It seems clear, according to interviews with a variety of officials, the investigators must have lost track of Mr. Shahzad at some point. He made it all the way down the jetway and into his seat.

 

Before the plane pulled away from the gate, though, investigators had caught up with him. He was taken out of his seat and into custody.

 

The 53 hours of work and uncertainty were over.

 



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