Two more held in New York bomb plot probe

Two men linked to an alleged al-Qaida associate accused of a plot to attack New York City with home-made bombs were arrested after one of the men caused a road accident while under surveillance.

Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded not guilty to a false statement charge in an indictment accusing him of lying to the FBI about a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A lawyer for the other suspect, Adis Medunjanin, said his client would appear in court today.

Law enforcement officials familiar with the case said yesterday that Medunjanin was facing more serious terror charges; one said he would probably be accused of seeking training from a terrorist organisation.

During a brief appearance in federal court in Brooklyn, Ahmedzay was remanded in custody until a hearing on Tuesday. But defence lawyer Michael Marinaccio noted that the indictment made no mention of terrorism.

“It seems to me that if (prosecutors) had that kind of information, we’d be reading about it in the indictment,” he said outside court.

Ahmedzay, 24, and Medunjanin, 25, were first publicly linked to the investigation in September, when investigators raided their homes shortly before the arrest of Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado airport shuttle driver who has denied a charge of supporting terrorism.

The former Queens high school classmates are suspected of going to Pakistan in 2008.

The latest arrests came after the FBI went to Medunjanin’s Queens apartment on Thursday afternoon with a search warrant and seized his passport. After the search, he apparently became upset and left in his car.

While driving erratically, Medunjanin called police and made angry comments referencing Allah, the law enforcement officials said. He got into an accident and was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

Federal authorities later took him into custody for questioning before deciding to arrest him early yesterday, the officials said.

Agents arrested Ahmedzay at about 3am while he was driving a cab in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, authorities said.

“He’s not guilty,” Shried Ahmedzay, 22, his brother, said yesterday. “He works hard to support his family.”

His brother said it was obvious that authorities had Ahmedzay under surveillance for months, saying unmarked cars frequently parked around his apartment building.

Medunjanin’s lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, has said FBI agents seized computers and mobile phones from his client’s apartment last year, but later returned them.

He insisted yesterday that Medunjanin had done nothing wrong and claimed federal authorities had not let his client confer with him or his family since an arrest made “under incredibly suspicious circumstances”.

Family members “have not been able to speak to him”, he said. “They’re frantic.”

Prosecutors said Zazi had recently travelled to an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan and that “others” accompanied him on the trip to the country.

The indictment unsealed yesterday accused Ahmedzay of lying during questioning in September about “all of the locations he visited during his trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan” in late 2008 and early 2009.

It also said he lied about conversations with someone about “attending a camp to receive military-type training”.

After receiving instruction on explosives, Zazi bought beauty supplies in a Denver suburb to make peroxide-based bombs, prosecutors said.

He tried to mix explosives in a hotel room in early September then drove to New York to carry out an attack, possibly on the public transport system, they said.

Investigators secretly searched his rented vehicle in New York on September 10 and found a laptop computer with bomb-making instructions, authorities said. Aware he was under surveillance, he flew back to Denver on September 12 and was arrested a week later.

Authorities had said they believed other suspects were involved in the plot. Two other men, including Zazi’s father, have been charged with lying to the FBI, but no-one else had been charged with terrorism.

Medunjanin, who is originally from Bosnia, and Ahmedzay, who was born in Afghanistan, are US citizens. They and Zazi attended Flushing High School in Queens.

Medunjanin also played football at Flushing High and graduated in June from Queens College. Ahmedzay, licensed to drive a taxi in New York City, took the civil service exam to become a firefighter, but his score made him unlikely to get an appointment.