Qaeda ship behind failed New York subway bomb plot, new indictment reveals

WASHINGTON - A new indictment has revealed a failed plan to blow up New York subways last fall was planned and directed by Al Qaeda leaders, and had connections to another plot in Manchester, England.

According to the New York Times, prosecutors have added four defendants to the case, including senior Al Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah.

Thirty-four-year-old Shukrijumah had helped recruit three young men for the subway plot. These men had attended high school together in New York and had travelled to tribal areas in Pakistan for terror training.

The indictment says Shukrijumah was the focus of intense attention after the 9/11 attacks because of his American citizenship and his knowledge of the United States. Eventually, the authorities realized that he was linked to senior Qaeda operatives and possibly involved in the bomb plot.

The indicment supplements an earlier indictment brought in Brooklyn charging the three men he recruited for the subway plot, including Najibullah Zazi, Zarein Ahmedzay, and Adis Medunjanin. They cooperated with the F.B.I. giving information, which led to the new indictment.

The new charges include conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiring and attempting to commit an act of terrorism across national boundaries, conspiring to provide and providing material support to Al Qaeda and other terrorism-related crimes.

The indictment also says an Al Qaeda facilitator, Ahmad or Zahid in Pakistan used the same email account to send coded messages to Zazi and one of the Manchester plotters, Abid Naseer.

The indictment was filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where it is being prosecuted by the office of Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Earlier, American officials had offered a reward of up to five million dollars for information leading to his capture.

“He very much disappeared, there were reports of him surfacing all over the place, but I don’t believe he was ever there. I believe he was back in Waziristan, which is the only safe place he could hide,” Evan F. Kohlmann, a veteran terrorism analyst with Flashpoint Global Partners in New York who has consulted for the government, said.

British authorities, who were investigating the Manchester plot arrested 11 men, 10 of them Pakistanis, in April 2009 in one of its most extensive counter terrorism operations since the 9/11 attacks. (ANI)