AQ Leader Charged in NYC Bomb Plot

This monster has been involved in seemingly every plot targeting New York the past couple decades so it's not as if this is shocking news. It does mean he's still out there in need of vaporizing.

Federal authorities are expected to announce criminal charges Wednesday against a senior al Qaeda leader in connection with a plot to bomb the New York City subway system last year, a person familiar with the investigation said.

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, who remains at large, is expected to be named in a superseding indictment brought in federal court in Brooklyn in connection with the criminal case against Najibullah Zazi, the person said. The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to announce the charges out of Washington later Wednesday, the person said.

Zazi, an Afghan native who worked as an airport shuttle driver in Colorado, admitted in February that he drove to New York last September with explosives and other bomb-making materials, intending to carry out an attack on Manhattan subway lines. While in New York, Zazi said he realized he was being investigated by law enforcement and threw away the explosives. He was arrested a few days later after returning to Colorado.

As part of his plea, Zazi said he traveled to Pakistan in 2008 with the intention of joining the Taliban to fight the U.S. in Afghanistan. While in Pakistan, Zazi said he was recruited by al Qaeda and received weapons and other training there, including explosives training.

Two other men allegedly traveled with Zazi to Pakistan at the time. One of those men, Zarein Ahmedzay, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to al Qaeda in April.

More on Shukrijumah here.

According to the new indictment, court filings and plea proceedings in the case, the plot involving Mr. Zazi was organized by Saleh al-Somali, Rashid Rauf, and Mr. Shukrijumah, who were then leaders of Qaeda’s “external operations” program dedicated to terrorist attacks in the United States and other Western countries.

The State Department offered a reward of up to $5 million several years ago for information leading directly to the capture of Mr. Shukrijumah, but he has managed to elude the authorities since the F.B.I. issued an alert for him in 2003.

He was identified as a senior terrorism figure by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during his intensive interrogation, and officials have said that concern about him as a threat grew with the discovery that he had received flight training in the United States about the same time as the 9/11 hijackers. A bulletin warning that he might try to cross American borders with a Saudi, Canadian or Trinidadian passport was issued in 2003.

Because Mr. Shukrijumah spent so much time in the United States, his familiarity with the language and culture, and thus his ability to move freely, made him the focus of intense concern.

His time in Brooklyn in the late 1980s and early ’90s put him close to the heart of radical Islamic extremism in the United States. At the time, his father, Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, reportedly did translation work for Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric who was linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Related.