NEW YORK // The Pakistani-born US citizen who botched a car bombing of Times Square in New York remained defiant while receiving a life sentence yesterday, warning that Muslims will continue to launch retaliatory attacks against the United States.
Faisal Shahzad, 31, pleaded guilty in June to the failed bombing on May 1 of midtown Manhattan’s tourist-filled theatre district. The former financial analyst was arrested two days later aboard a Dubai-bound airliner, minutes before it was due to leave New York.
US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum said the bomber had betrayed the oath he made when he became a US citizen last year. She described the sentence, a lifetime in prison without parole, as a deterrent to would-be terrorists.
“This defendant has repeatedly expressed his total lack of remorse and, if given the opportunity, to repeat the crime,” she said, before admonishing Shahzad for swearing to defend the US while secretly harbouring plans to kill Americans.
“You appear to be someone who was capable of education and I do hope you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Quran wants you to kill lots of people,” she added, while repeatedly calling the attack “unsuccessful”.
Shahzad, a self-styled “Muslim soldier” who expected his bomb to kill at least 40 people and mark the start of a terrorism campaign to punish the US for invading Afghanistan and Iraq, was unrepentant throughout the half-hour hearing.
Shahzad sparred with the judge – answering her sentence with the phrase “Allahu Akbar” and paying tribute to Muslim fighters from Osama bin Laden to Saladin, the 12th-century opponent of European Crusaders. Addressing the Manhattan federal court in a soft voice, Shahzad predicted the collapse of America’s financial and military hegemony and warned “more blood” will flow unless the US withdraws troops from Islamic countries.
“We are only Muslims … but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorising you,” he said.
"We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia law and freedom."
The naturalised US citizen, who lived with his family in the state of Connecticut, pleaded guilty to 10 terrorism and weapons counts and told investigators that militants from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan supported him with US$15,000 (Dh55,100) and five days of explosives training in December.
Shahzad, the son of a retired Pakistani vice air marshal, left a Nissan Pathfinder four-wheel drive in Times Square on a Saturday night loaded with a potentially deadly assembly of fertiliser bags, firecrackers, cans of petrol and propane gas that were wired up to two alarm clocks. He lit the fuse of his home-made bomb and caught a train from Grand Central Terminal to his home. A street vendor spotted smoke coming from the four-wheel-drive and alerted police, who cleared the area.
In a letter urging the judge to pass a life sentence, prosecutors said Shahzad had accessed websites showing videos of Times Square crowds and selected the busiest time and location to maximise the number of pedestrians that would probably perish in the blast. The government submission included a 40-minute video showing Shahzad firing a machine gun in what appears to be the mountains of Pakistan as he announces that he has met Pakistani Taliban members and decided “to raise an attack inside America”.
It shows Shahzad quoting from the Quran, revealing his intentions towards the end when he states: “I have been trying to join my brothers in jihad ever since 9/11 happened. I am planning to wage an attack inside America.”
Shahzad, who consulted with his Taliban trainers over the internet while making the bomb, told investigators that he was “prepared to conduct additional attacks until he was captured or killed”, prosecutors said. The judge also received a video of a simulated explosion of a bomb comparable in strength to Shahzad’s, which shows a fireball ripping apart a mock car bomb and five vehicles positioned nearby.
Prosecutors note that Shahzad’s hatred of the United States came about despite building a prosperous life for his wife and two young children. Much of his success was built on opportunities provided by the US, including the chance to earn a university degree while on a student visa and permission to remain in the country on a working visa sponsored by a US company, they said.
jreinl@thenational.ae
