Washington, May 5 (Inditop.com) Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born suspect who tried to explode a car bomb in Times Square, had lived legally in the US for 10 years and apparently often travelled to Pakistan.
Shahzad, 30, who has admitted to getting bomb making training in Pakistan, made his last trip to his homeland in February, the New York Times reported citing a Pakistani intelligence official who said he had left on an Emirates flight from Islamabad.
The unnamed official told the Times that Shahzad had travelled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the US.
It was not immediately clear where he had travelled during his last visit or whether he had flown to Pakistan directly from the US, or had made stops along the way.
According to court charges filed against him, Faisal, who was arrested as his plane was about to take off from Kennedy Airport shortly before midnight Monday, he received a series of phone calls from Pakistan in the days leading up to the incident.
Five of these calls were received on the same day he bought the Nissan Pathfinder used in the attempted attack Saturday night in the bustling area of New York, documents filed by FBI Tuesday in US District Court in New York show.
Shahzad became a naturalised US citizen April 17, 2009.
The court documents allege that Shahzad admitted to investigators to driving the Pathfinder into Times Square and attempting to detonate the bomb.
After receiving explosives training at a camp in Pakistan’s terrorist hotbed in Waziristan region, Shahzad returned to the US via a one-way plane ticket Feb 3, the court documents say, citing Customs and Border Protection records.
He told immigration officials upon his return that he had been visiting his parents in Pakistan for five months. He also told officials that his wife remained in Pakistan.
Authorities focused on Shahzad when they traced evidence to him from the sale of the Nissan Pathfinder used in the failed attack.
Phone records cited in the court documents show a series of calls made from Pakistan to a pre-paid cell phone used by Shahzad. The phone was activated April 16 and inactivated around April 28, last Wednesday. The attempted attack was carried out Saturday.
According to federal law enforcement officials, Shahzad entered the US on an F-1 student visa in January 1999. At that time the authorities ran a criminal background check but found no adverse information.
Based on documents discarded outside the house in Shelton, where he lived until earlier this year, and cited by the Times, Shahzad appears to have attended a university programme in Pakistan that was affiliated with the University of Bridgeport, starting in 1997.
A résumé said he was studying for a bachelor of science degree with “specialisation in finance”. He said he spoke Urdu, English and Pashto and liked to work on computers, play sports and “talk to people from different backgrounds”.
He also attended a programme in Karachi affiliated with Southeastern University, a private, non-profit school in Washington that shut down last year after losing its accreditation.
A transcript for the spring of 1998 showed that he earned Ds in English composition and microeconomics, Bs in Introduction to Accounting and Introduction to Humanities, and a C in statistics.
In 2000, he enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, where he received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering.
The documents also included a copy of what was apparently an old Pakistani passport – it expired in February 2000 and listed Shahzad’s occupation as “student” – and a US student visa that expired at the end of 2002.
On university documents, which Shahzad appears to have filled out and signed, he lists his birthplace as Karachi. But a senior Pakistani official cited by the Times said Tuesday that he was born in Kashmir.
In January 2002, the authorities said, Shahzad got an H1-B visa for skilled workers. Shahzad married an American citizen named Huma Mian, and was granted a green card in January 2006.
He was naturalised in a ceremony in Bridgeport on April 17 of last year before a federal magistrate.
