Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Pakistan-born American Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty to trying to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square while working with the Taliban in Pakistan, has been sentenced to life in prison.

A judge in Manhattan federal court Tuesday gave Shahzad, 31, who was arrested two days after his May 1 attempted bombing with a crude bomb packed into the back of an SUV, a mandatory life prison term.

“Brace yourself for the war with Islam. This is the first droplet of the flood that will follow,” said a defiant Shahzad who had pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts.

“The past nine years, the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the US except it has awakened Muslims,” said Shahzad, a former budget analyst from Connecticut.

Shahzad admitted he drove a Nissan Pathfinder into the crowded Manhattan intersection laden with improvised explosives. He fled when they failed to go off and was arrested May 3 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after boarding a flight to Dubai.

Asked by US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum Tuesday if he hadn’t taken an oath to the United States in becoming a citizen, Shahzad answered: “I did swear, but I did not mean it.”

He pleaded guilty June 21 to all 10 terrorism-related charges, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, in an indictment filed by prosecutors in the office of Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.

The vehicle, containing a device made of firecrackers, propane tanks and gasoline canisters, was found abandoned on the street as the items in the back smoldered, the US said.

Shahzad told Cedarbaum when he pleaded guilty that he set the bomb’s detonator to go off between 2 1/2 to 5 minutes and then walked away.

He said he carried a loaded 9 mm Kel-Tec rifle with him to Times Square, folded it, and put it in a computer laptop bag before walking to the Grand Central Terminal train station, about five blocks away.

Prosecutors argued Shahzad deserved a life prison term because his crime was premeditated and because he exploited the benefits of his citizenship to join a foreign terrorist organisation intent on attacking the US.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)