2 Men Linked To Najibullah Zazi Arrested In NYC

Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay, Tied To Zazi Bomb-Plot Terror Probe, To Be Arraigned Friday


Two Queens men are expected to be arraigned Friday in connection with an Al Qaeda terror plot to bomb New York City.

Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay were busted as part of an FBI task force investigation into a suspected Al Qaeda cell, Special Agent Richard Kolko said.

Medunjanin, 25, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon after he crashed his car on the Whitestone Expressway while the feds tailed him, sources said.

Ahmedzay, a 24-year-old cabbie, was grabbed in Greenwich Village about 10 p.m. Thursday, the sources said.

Both men are believed to have ties to Najibullah Zazi, 24,, a Colorado airport driver the feds say is the mastermind of an Al Qaeda plot to attack New York.

All three men attended Flushing High School in Queens.

Ahmedzay and Zazi are natives of Afghanistan; Medunjanin's parents are from Bosnia. Asked if Medunjanin and Ahmedzay posed a serious threat, a law enforcement source told the Daily News,

"You don't put that kind of surveillance on small pieces of the puzzle." Zazi has pleaded not guilty to charges of getting Al Qaeda training to build homemade bombs to attack city targets.

Investigators raided Medunjanin's apartment earlier Thursday and had a warrant to seize his passport as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, the suspect's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said.

Medunjanin handed over the passport and was allowed to leave, sources said.

But he soon realized he was being followed and called 911. "He's driving erratically, then he speeds up and rams into a car in front of him," the law enforcement source said.

Medunjanin was treated for minor bumps and bruises at New York Hospital Queens in Flushing before he was taken into custody by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The feds were also following Ahmedzay and waited for him to be free of fares before they pounced, sources said. His mystified mother, who declined to give her name, said she doesn't understand why the feds are holding him.

"He's a good man," she said. "He's innocent. I don't know where he is."

Both men have been watched by the feds since September, when investigators arrested Zazi and raided his friends' apartments in Queens - including Medunjanin's pad.

Those raids turned up bomb-making equipment, and Zazi was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

Medunjanin graduated last year from Queens College with a degree in economics. He and Ahmedzay are believed to have accompanied Zazi to an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 2008, sources said.

Zazi told the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force after he was arrested that he had received Al Qaeda training in weapons and explosives in Pakistan but denied any plot to bomb New York.



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Sources: NY Daily News, NY Post, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps