Al_Qaida 'agent' looked at New York targets

A US man accused of becoming an al-Qaida agent discussed bombing New York cinemas, Grand Central Terminal, Times Square and the Stock Exchange before settling on the city’s subways, a court heard today.

Adis Madunjanin went on trial in Brooklyn in connection with the alleged 2009 plot.

Defence lawyer Robert Gottlieb accused the government of using “inflammatory rhetoric” about al Qaida and terrorism to prevent jurors “from seeing the truth about this case”.

Madunjanin looked at the high-profile targets with two of his former high school classmates, assistant US attorney James Looman said in opening statements.

The men “were prepared to kill themselves and everyone else around them – men, women and children,” Mr Looman said.

There is no dispute that Medunjanin and his two former classmates travelled together to Pakistan in 2008. But federal prosecutors say the three were homegrown Muslim extremists who, under al-Qaida’s tutelage, went back to the United States and hatched a foiled plot to attack the subways as suicide bombers.

Medunjanin, 27, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, providing material support to a terrorist organisation and other charges in what US officials have described as one of the most chilling terror conspiracies since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Childhood friends Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay have admitted in guilty pleas that they wanted to avenge US aggression in the Arab world by becoming martyrs. Both could be called by the government to testify against Medunjanin.

Another possible witness is Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island man who joined al-Qaida around the same time as the other men. Officials have credited Vinas with providing key intelligence about the terror group since his capture in 2008.

Jurors are also expected to hear evidence that following his arrest, Medunjanin told the FBI he had become a more devout Muslim about four years before the plot was exposed after he and Zazi began spending time together at a local mosque, FBI reports say. He also recalled being influenced by tapes of US-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, they say.

In 2008, Medunjanin and his friends decided to join the Taliban and fight US soldiers in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the FBI reports say. The three instead were recruited by al-Qaida operatives, who gave them weapons training in their Pakistan camp and asked them to become suicide bombers, they say.

Medunjanin told his al-Qaida handlers “he had prayed but still wasn’t sure if he was ready to be a martyr,” the reports say. He later was sent home on his own, the reports add, after he told them “the best thing for him to do ... was to return to the US and provide financial support” for the terror network.

Zazi, after relocating to the Denver area, got as far as cooking up explosives and setting out by car for New York in September 2009 to carry out the attack. He was arrested after abandoning the plan and fleeing back to Colorado.

The FBI reports say Medunjanin denied knowing what Zazi was up to. And the defence has claimed he spoke to the FBI under duress.

In a sworn statement, the defendant accused agents of making veiled threats against his family and denying him access to his attorney for 36 hours. Federal authorities insist his statements were voluntary.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service disclosed that it has struck a rare deal with a convicted terrorist to offer evidence in Medunjanin’s trial.

Saajid Badat was jailed in Britain in 2005 for his role in a 2001 plot to down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in shoes.

He has been given a two-year sentence reduction in return for co-operating.