NEW YORK – A Pakistani-born American citizen defiantly pleaded guilty on Monday to attempting to set off a car bomb in New York’s Times Square, saying that Islamist extremists would continue to attack the United States.
Faisal Shahzad (30) admitted travelling to Pakistan to receive bomb-making training from the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and receiving $12,000 from the group to carry out the failed plot on May 1st.
Shahzad, who has a wife and two children living in Pakistan, pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted terrorism transcending national borders. He faces mandatory life in prison.
“I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over,” Shahzad told the court. Until the US stops drone aircraft attacks and the occupation of “Muslim lands,” Shahzad said “we will be attacking the United States and I plead guilty to that.”
“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” Shahzad said in a long speech frequently interrupted by US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum seeking clarification. “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim-soldier.”
He said his intention was to do “damage to the building, injure the people or kill the people”.
Shahzad awkwardly parked a sports utility vehicle in Times Square with its engine running and hazard lights flashing on a balmy Saturday evening last month.
“I ignited the fuses and I gave the time of 2½ to five minutes and I left the car,” Shahzad told the court. “I was waiting to hear a sound.”
But street vendors alerted police to the smoking vehicle within minutes and thousands of people were evacuated from the popular theatre district. A bomb squad diffused the crude device, which included firecrackers and propane gas tanks.
CIA-operated drone aircraft have targeted Taliban figures in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the group has vowed to avenge missile strikes that have killed some of its leaders. But Shahzad said the militants did not tell him how or what to attack in the United States. “I got the cash, I worked on it, I made the bomb, and I drove it to Times Square,” he said. – (Reuters)