A figure in what authorities describe as a widening inquiry into a possible plot to detonate homemade bombs in the United States appeared in a New York City courtroom on Monday on charges that he lied to federal investigators about the investigation.
The suspect, Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, is a popular imam in Queens who often served as a source of information for local and federal authorities and may not be implicated in the possible bombing plot. But he was arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on charges that he tipped off Najibullah Zazi, the plot’s central figure, that investigators were shadowing him and then lied about doing so when questioned.
The imam, a slight and long-bearded man, walked into Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak’s courtroom wearing a long flowing light-brown tunic and sandals and carrying a white-trimmed black coat. The judge ordered Mr. Afzali held until a bail hearing on Thursday.
Court papers released Sunday described a plot by Mr. Zazi to set off homemade bombs and said that Mr. Zazi had been trained in weapons and explosives in Pakistan and had made nine pages of handwritten notes on how to make and handle bombs. The arraignment of Mr. Zazi and his father was scheduled later in Federal District Court in Denver. They too were charged with lying during questioning in the terrorism investigation.
The court papers, released after the arrests in Colorado of Mr. Zazi and his father, as well as that of the imam in Queens, showed that during a search in New York of the younger Mr. Zazi’s rental car on Sept. 11, agents found a laptop computer containing an image of the notes. According to a criminal complaint, the notes “contain formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, explosives detonators and components of a fusing system.”
Court papers also show that in F.B.I. interviews, Mr. Zazi, 24, told agents that during a 2008 trip to Pakistan, he attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at a Qaeda training camp in a tribal area.
The arrests, which came late Saturday, indicated the case was rapidly accelerating and provided for the first time — in a sometimes confusing week of events — an explanation of why authorities have focused on the men, even as it shed little light about the alleged plot still under investigation in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere.
“It is important to note that we have no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack,” David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said early Sunday.
Veteran counterterrorism officials said they were convinced the plot was potentially serious, based largely on their emerging suspicions about Mr. Zazi, his training in explosives, his travel to Pakistan tribal areas where Al Qaeda is influential and the apparent ease of his movements within the United States.
But these officials, in Washington, New York and Denver, acknowledge that they could be overstating Mr. Zazi’s significance because they know little about his precise intentions and may never know completely what he might have been planning. But as the investigation has progressed there appear to be few doubters within the government.
At Monday’s arraignment in Brooklyn, government lawyers provided notice that they would be introducing evidence in the case obtained under the Federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the authorities to apply for wiretaps, search warrants and monitoring of e-mail. But Jeffrey Knox, an assistant United States attorney in charge of the violence and terrorism division who is handling the Afzali case, provided no details about what the evidence would be.
The criminal complaint said that Mr. Afzali, in conversations with Mr. Zazi, divulged the government’s interest in Mr. Zazi as a suspect and alerted Mr. Zazi to the fact he might be picked up. In a transcript of one conversation. Mr. Afzali asked Mr. Zazi whether there was any “evidence in his car.”
Outside the courtroom, Ronald Kuby, Mr. Afzali’s lawyer, said his client was simply trying to help the F.B.I. and questioned the logic of Mr. Afzali’s lying about conversations which he knew the government was eavesdropping on.
Criminal complaints filed before the arraignments said that on Wednesday, when agents interviewed Mr. Zazi in Denver, he falsely said he had never seen the handwritten notes and told agents that he had not written them.
In the days leading up to his arrest, before he voluntarily underwent three marathon sessions of questioning by F.B.I. agents in Denver, Mr. Zazi, in interviews with reporters and through his lawyers, denied any links to Al Qaeda, any involvement in any plot and any wrongdoing whatsoever. On Sunday, after the announcement of the charges, neither his lawyer, Arthur Folsom, nor a public relations adviser whom Mr. Folsom had hired to field the seemingly endless barrage of calls from reporters, would comment.
The complaints are said by authorities to be a preliminary step that enabled them to detain the men, who had known for more than a week that they were under investigation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/nyregion/22terror.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/nyregion/22terror.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
Topic: Imam Arrested in Terror Inquiry Appears in Court (Read 435 times)