Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani joins Larry King tonight to talk about the bomb attempt in Times Square. Watch “Larry King Live” tonight at 9 ET.
New York (CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM) — Any grudge that accused Times Square plotter Faisal Shahzad may have held against the United States appears to have developed recently, according to a senior U.S. official who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.
The investigation has found nothing to indicate that Shahzad had any long-standing grudge or anger toward the United States, the official said.
“What we know is, the dynamic appeared to have changed in the last year,” the official said.
Investigators have not been determined whether Shahzad had any training from Pakistani groups in anything, the source said.
Additionally, the official suggested, detentions in Pakistan over the past two days were carried out to collect information and were not because officials had reached any conclusions about their guilt or ties to any groups.
“They are reaching out to people, bringing them in and doing their due diligence, but ‘arrest’ suggests a strong connection to the guy. While anything is possible, they haven’t arrived at any conclusion,” the source said.
Authorities in Pakistan have rounded up a number of people for questioning.
Shahzad’s father-in-law, Iftikhar Mian, and friend Tauseef Ahmed were picked up in Karachi on Tuesday, two intelligence officials said.
In July, Shahzad was driven to a meeting with at least one senior Taliban leader in Pakistan by a man taken into custody Tuesday, a senior Pakistani official said Wednesday.
The official said Muhammed Rehan, who was detained Tuesday in Karachi, drove Faisal Shahzad in a pickup to Peshawar on July 7.
At some point, they headed to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders, the official said.
Rehan is believed to have links to the militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is close to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, the official said.
Several officials in Karachi said Rehan was picked up in Karachi’s North Nazimabad district. They said others were taken into custody for questioning Wednesday but could not say how many, who they were or where they were seized.
A senior U.S. official said investigators were looking into possible links between Shahzad and Pakistani groups and had found none, “but that doesn’t say there is no connection.”
The official added that there was nothing to indicate that Shahzad is from an extremist family.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said “the Pakistanis are fully cooperating in the investigation. They recognize, as we do, that this is a shared responsibility and a shared threat.”
Shahzad, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, was arrested late Monday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after boarding a flight bound for Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His final destination was to have been Pakistan.
The charges against Shahzad paint him as a terrorist who received explosives training in Pakistan’s volatile Waziristan region, where government forces have been working to root out Taliban militants. The Pakistani Taliban, a major militant group in the region, praised Shahzad but denied any link to him.
Shahzad has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, and three other counts in connection with the incident. If convicted, he could get in prison.
Read complaint filed in federal court Tuesday (PDF)
He waived his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney as he provided information about the plot to investigators, a source familiar with the investigation said.
Shahzad admitted that he drove a Nissan Pathfinder into Times Square on Saturday night and attempted to detonate the vehicle, which was packed with gasoline, propane tanks, fireworks and nonexplosive fertilizer, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York.
A law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said investigators have found a train receipt showing that Shahzad boarded a train from New York to Connecticut 30 minutes after allegedly parking the car bomb. This source said investigators believe that he ran to catch the train, which pulled out about 7 or 7:15 p.m.
The source was unsure where in Connecticut Shahzad got off the train.
Court documents said that, after receiving bomb-making training in Pakistan, Shahzad returned to the United States via a one-way plane ticket February 3.
Shahzad told immigration officials upon his return that he had been visiting his parents in Pakistan for five months, according to the documents. He also told officials that his wife remained in Pakistan.
The court documents show that Shahzad apparently maintained contact with people in Pakistan after returning to the United States.
He received 12 phone calls from his country of birth in the days leading up to the incident, five on the day he bought the Nissan Pathfinder used in the attempted attack. Those calls ceased three days before the failed bombing, the documents show.
Authorities began focusing on Shahzad after tracing the sale of the Pathfinder to him.
Shahzad has a Karachi identification card, a sign of Pakistani residency, according to Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
Shahzad’s father, Bahar Ul Haq, is a retired senior officer in the Pakistani Air Force. The former air vice marshal lives in the Peshawar suburb of Hayatabad, according to Kafayat Ali, whose father and Faisal’s father are first cousins.
Shahzad lived at his father’s house in Hayatabad when his father was posted in Peshawar, Ali said. Shahzad, his elder brother Amir and their two sisters moved with the father and received their education in the cities where the father was assigned.
Ali said Shahzad’s hometown is Mohib Banda, a village about 78 miles (124 kilometers) northwest of Islamabad. Ul Haq has farmland in Mohib Banda, and Faisal and his siblings visited there during vacations and to attend relatives’ weddings.
Ali said Amir is a mechanical engineer living in Canada, where he is married and lives with his family. Both sisters are married; one is a doctor, and the other is a housewife.
“This is certain: that these people, they never indulged in any criminal activities,” Ali said. “Not a family member. Not the village from which both of these people belong, none of the village members involved in any criminal activities or any jihad activities.”
Shahzad almost eluded authorities, who arrested him late Monday on Emirates Flight 202 before it took off. His name had been put on a no-fly list earlier in the day.
Hours before the flight, he made his reservation by phone as he drove to the airport, investigators said. When he paid for his ticket in cash at the ticket counter, the airline had not refreshed its no-fly information so his name raised no red flags, a senior counterterrorism official said.
This has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to change its directives, telling airlines to check updated no-fly lists within two hours of when they are issued, not within 24 hours, as called for under the previous directive.
CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM’s Deb Feyerick, Elise Labott, Reza Sayah and Samson Desta contributed to this story.
