Militant’s Path From Pakistan to Times Square

[Valin]

NY Times:

ANDREA ELLIOTT
6/22/10

As dawn broke on July 10, 2007, Pakistani commandos stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, ending a lengthy standoff with armed militants in a blaze of gunfire that left more than 100 dead. In Washington, officials applauded the siege as an important demonstration of Pakistan’s willingness to confront Islamist militants.
Yet Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant living in Connecticut, was outraged. He had prayed at the Red Mosque during visits home. The militant Web sites he frequented portrayed the siege as a brazen attack on Islam by a corrupt government bent on pleasing America.

The episode was pivotal for Mr. Shahzad, setting him on a course to join a militant Pakistani group that would train him in explosives and bankroll his plot to strike at Times Square last month, according to senior American intelligence officials and others who have been briefed on or seen reports of Mr. Shahzad’s interrogations.

“That was the triggering event,” said a person familiar with the case.....(Snip)

In the aftermath of Mr. Shahzad’s failed bombing, the public account of his radicalization has largely focused on his time in America. But precisely how this suburban father and financial analyst came to join a terrorist network in the mountains of Waziristan has remained largely a mystery.

Interviews with American officials, a senior Pakistani intelligence official and others familiar with the case revealed that Mr. Shahzad came into contact with militants in Pakistan through a chain of friends, starting with Shahid Hussain, a 32-year-old Pakistani whom Mr. Shahzad had met in Bridgeport, Conn., where both men went to business school. Back in Islamabad, the two friends and a third man, Muhammad Shouaib Mughal, set out to join a militant group as early as 2008, finding their way to the Pakistani Taliban through a connection at the Red Mosque, according to the interviews.

The group, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban, initially suspected that Mr. Shahzad was a spy, and turned him away, according to the interviews. But they accepted Mr. Mughal, who ultimately persuaded them to admit Mr. Shahzad. During training, he met briefly with the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, the officials said. After Mr. Shahzad returned to the United States this year, he continued to communicate with the militant group through Mr. Mughal.

Both Mr. Mughal and Mr. Hussain have been arrested in Pakistan. Mr. Shahzad’s court-appointed lawyer, Philip L. Weinstein, declined to comment.
(Snip)