New York terror suspect pleads guilty for plotting subway attack
By ANITuesday, February 23, 2010
NEW YORK - An airport shuttle driver, accused of hatching a plot to detonate homemade bombs inside New York’s subway system, has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.
Najibullah Zazi entered the guilty plea deal after agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office.
The 25-year-old Afghan native told Judge Raymond Dearie that he planned a “martyrdom operation in Manhattan” and he was recruited by Al-Qaeda to carry out the attack.
“To me it meant that I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the US military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan,” The New York Post quoted Zazi, as saying.
He was arrested in September 2009, and the FBI claims that he attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 2008.
The prosecutors also claim that Zazi drove to New York from Denver last September with the intent to detonate weapons of mass destruction in the city.
Zazi now faces a life prison sentence without parole after pleading guilty to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support to a foreign terror organization.
He is currently housed in solitary confinement inside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and will be sentenced on June 25. (ANI)
