Suspect in terror plot arrested at Colorado home
AURORA, Colorado — FBI agents late Saturday arrested Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Colorado resident and Afghan national suspected in an alleged terrorist plot in the United States.
Zazi and his father, Muhammad Zazi, were handcuffed without incident as authorities raided Zazi’s home in the Denver suburb of Aurora, CNN’s Jim Spellman reported from the scene.
Earlier in the day, Najibullah Zazi, who has been questioned for the past three days by federal investigators, declined to attend a fourth day of interviews, his attorney’s publicist said.
Zazi has admitted to having ties to al Qaeda, an administration official familiar with the matter told CNN Friday. Either a plea deal or charges are possible for Zazi, the official said.
The nature of the charges was not immediately clear late Saturday.
The alleged terrorist plot, which came to light this week after raids in New York, may have been targeting a major transportation center, like a large railroad or subway station, sources close to the investigation told CNN on Thursday.
There were plans for an attack, presumably in the New York area, where crowds are large and security screening for nonairport travelers is lax, the sources said.
Two sources familiar with the investigation said that Zazi had video of New York’s Grand Central Terminal, a massive junction of rail and subway lines, as well as shops and restaurants, which see an average of more than a half million visitors per day.
A former counterterrorism official said backpacks, computers and maps were found during searches in the New York City borough of Queens, and field tests turned up positive for explosives. But such tests often yield false positives, and the former official was unaware whether more definitive test results had been obtained.
On Wednesday, federal agents searched Zazi’s apartment in Denver and another home in the same Denver suburb in connection with the investigation.
A law enforcement official told CNN that diagrams showing how to make bombs were found on the computer that Zazi had with him when he was stopped in New York during a recent visit. But his lawyer, Arthur Folsom, denied that was true.
“There’s no diagram of a bomb; there’s no information like that,” Folsom told reporters Thursday as he accompanied his client to his second meeting with federal agents. Had that been the case, he asked, “Do you really think the FBI would have allowed us to walk out of here last night?”
Zazi has no ties to terrorism, Folsom said.
He suggested that Zazi may have drawn investigators’ attention “because he stayed at a house owned by an old friend of his who was under observation from the FBI.”
Folsom said Zazi stayed in an apartment that was raided after he had driven from Denver to New York on business. Sources close to the investigation told CNN that the Queens raids were spurred by a confluence of events in the city — including the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session and President Barack Obama’s Wall Street speech on Monday.
Law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation said the Colorado searches were part of a probe that began with Zazi and led to New York.
The case began with a tip from a New York police informant and led to FBI wiretaps to develop the case, the former counterterrorism official said.
Agents launched the raids after police stopped Zazi on the George Washington Bridge during a recent visit to New York City, raising concerns that he would figure out he was under surveillance, the former official told CNN.
FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee Wednesday that he did not think the investigation had revealed any “imminent danger.”
Resources devoted to the investigation include the placement of a hostage rescue team in New York for possible raids and the deployment of resources to the Denver area in Colorado, where another phase of the probe is taking place, the sources said.
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Sources: CNN, AP, Google Maps
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