Family man: Faisal Shahzad, left, and with a woman thought to be his wife Huma Mian and one of their childre
A U.S. Department of Justice graphic showing the positioning of charges in the Nissan Pathfinder allegedly driven by Shahzad and left in Times Square on Saturday
This CCTV footage shows the Nissan Pathfinder, loaded with explosives, being driven into Times Square shortly before it was abandoned
Faisal Shahzad asked: ‘Are you NYPD or FBI?’, as he was seized from his seat on a plane that was about to leave JFK airport for Pakistan.
He tried to car-bomb New York in revenge for U.S. drone attacks that killed Taliban leaders, it was claimed yesterday.
A security row erupted after it emerged he gave a surveillance team the slip and was let on to the plane because of a bungle by airline staff.
Members of the media walk around a house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where FBI agents had searched for Shahzad
Other home: A house said to belong to Shahzad's family in Pabbi, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan
Shahzad, 30, a naturalised U.S. citizen, had only recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan and has admitted receiving bomb-making training in a Taliban-controlled part of the country.
In court documents the father of two also admitted driving the Nissan SUV packed with a homemade ‘weapon of mass destruction’ to New York and priming it to explode last Saturday.
The New York Post reported he trained with the extremist Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and was radicalised because he saw first-hand the effects of U.S. bombing on fellow militants.
Shahzad waited two days after the failed bombing before driving to JFK and buying a one-way ticket to Pakistan.
By then the FBI team supposed to be following him had lost him.
Investigators only found out he was on board minutes before take-off when the final passenger list was sent to customs officials. U.S. officials last night said he was co-operating with investigators.
Despite the best efforts of highly trained investigators armed with the most advanced technology in the world, two simple security failings appear to have allowed Shahzad to come within minutes of escape.
First, he gave investigators tailing him since 3pm on Monday the slip.
Authorities believe he decided to flee after being spooked by news reports that investigators were seeking a Pakistani suspect in Connecticut.
The FBI and the New York Police Department declined to comment.
Second, Emirates officials - unaware that he had been placed on a no-fly list - did not check the Web forum where the latest updates are posted in the minutes before take-off.
It was only thanks to a vigilant customs agent who spotted Shahzad's name on the flight manifest just 30 minutes before take-off that authorities knew he was on board the plane.
The Obama administration played down that Shahzad had made it aboard the plane.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would not talk about it, other than to say Customs officials prevented the plane from taking off. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the security system has fallback procedures in place for times like this, and they worked.
And Attorney General Eric Holder said he 'was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him'.
The no-fly list is supposed to mean just that. And Shahzad's name was added to the list early Monday afternoon as a result of breaking developments in the investigation.
When Emirates sold the ticket, it was working off an outdated list. Airline officials would have had to check a Web forum where updates are sent if it were to have flagged him.
Because they did not, law enforcement officials were not aware of his travel plans until they received the passenger list 30 minutes before take-off.
By that time, passengers usually are on board.
Gibbs blamed the airline but emphasized a more positive bottom line: U.S. authorities did get Shahzad on the no-fly list and he never took off.
'There's a series of built-in redundancies, this being one of them,' Gibbs said.
'If there's a mistake by a carrier, it can be double-checked.'
The list is only as good as the nation's intelligence and the experts who analyse it.
If a lead is not shared, or if an analyst is unable to connect one piece of information to another, a terrorist could slip onto an aeroplane because his name is not on the watch list.
Officials allege that is just what took place ahead of the attempted December 25 attack on a U.S.-bound jet.
In the case of the Times Square suspect, the intelligence process worked: Shahzad's name was on the list, but the airlines did not check it when he bought his ticket.
More...
* Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad charged with attempted use of weapon of mass destruction
Shahzad went through normal airport security before he boarded the plane. He was unarmed and had no explosive material on him when he was arrested.
Emirates did not return repeated calls for comments.
Earlier yesterday, the company issued a general statement saying it was cooperating with investigators and takes every precaution to ensure its passengers' safety.
The reliance on airlines to check government lists has been a known problem for years.
The U.S. government has long planned to take over the responsibility for matching passengers to watch lists, but the transition has taken longer than expected.
The new program is still in the test phase for domestic airlines and is still months away from beginning with international carriers.
Last night Shahzad admitted trying to blow up a car bomb in New York's Times Square using explosives training he received in Pakistan.
The Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, who received citizenship in April of last year, was charged last night with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in Saturday evening's failed Times Square bombing.
According to a federal complaint, he confessed to buying an SUV, rigging it with a homemade bomb and driving it into the busy area where he tried to detonate it.
He said he was recently taught how to make bombs on a visit to the Taliban-controlled area of Waziristan.
The father of two, 30, lived with his wife Huma Mian, their children and his two sisters-in-law in Connecticut, where neighbours said the family was very religious.
Mian had been spotted wearing a full burka while her husband, who gained U.S. citizenship last year, worked on Wall Street.
In court documents he admits driving the SUV packed with a homemade 'weapon of mass destruction' into New York and priming it to explode.
Pakistani authorities last night arrested several suspects linked to the plot, which the country's Taliban claimed responsibility for.
Shahzad also received four calls to his mobile from Pakistan in the days leading up to the attack on Saturday.
In the court documents, FBI Special Agent Andrew Pachtmansays: 'After his arrest, Shahzad stated he had recently received bomb-making training in Waziristan, Pakistan'
Shahzad bought the bomb truck, a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, for cash from a student over the internet a few weeks ago, then filled it with homemade explosives and drove to Times Square, prosecutors said.
Shahzad had not been seen at his job since the failed bombing, which was foiled when a street vendor spotted the car smoking.
The charges Shahzad faces include that he used a weapon of mass destruction, attempted to kill or maim, and tried to destroy buildings.
A law enforcement official said that Shahzad had effectively admitted to all the charges.
'He's admitted to buying the truck, putting the devices together, putting them in the truck, leaving the truck there and leaving the scene,' the source told Reuters.
'He's claimed to have acted alone. He did admit to all the charges, so to speak,' the source said, adding that investigators were still looking into his activities during a recent trip to Pakistan.
However investigators are not buying his story that he was a 'lone wolf'.
'Based on our collective experience it's hard to really believe that this is something someone would do on their own. It seems hard to pull off alone. There's a lot we don't know yet,' the source said.
Pakistani police have arrested several people in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb attack, security sources said.
'We have picked up a few family members' related to Faisal Shahzad, a security official in Karachi said. A friend of Shahzad was also arrested.
Shahzad had recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan.
FBI agents searched the home at a known address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, said agent Kimberly Mertz.
Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house, which is in a mixed-race, working-class neighbourhood of multi-family homes in Connecticut's largest city.
A bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said America 'will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice', suggesting additional suspects are being sought.
The bomb in the vehicle could have produced 'a significant fireball' and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows, police said.
The SUV was parked on a street lined with restaurants and Broadway theatres, and full of people out on a Saturday night.
The vehicle identification number (VIN) had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the recorded owner.
'The discovery of the VIN on the engine block was pivotal in that it led to the identifying the registered owner,' said Paul Browne, chief New York Police Department spokesman. 'It continues to pay dividends.'
Officials say the SUV's registered owner, whose name has not been released, is not considered a suspect in the bomb scare.
In Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday's attempted bombing was a terrorist act.
The motive remains unclear. The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for the bomb in three videos that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said.
New York officials said police have no evidence to support the claims. It is unclear if the suspect in custody has any relationship to the group.
The SUV was parked near offices of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated show South Park that the militant group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the Prophet Mohammed by depicting him in a bear costume.
Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the explosive device, and no one was hurt.
The explosive device had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate the petrol cans and set the propane alight in a chain reaction, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
A metal rifle cabinet placed in the cargo area was packed with fertiliser, but bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertiliser used in previous terrorist bombings.
The exact amount of fertiliser was unknown. Police estimated the cabinet weighed 200lb to 250lb when they pulled it from the vehicle.
Not long ago, Faisal Shahzad had a pretty enviable life: He became an American citizen after emigrating from Pakistan, where he came from a wealthy family.
He earned an MBA. He had a well-educated wife and two children and owned a house in a middle-class Connecticut suburb.
In the past couple of years, though, his life seemed to unravel: He left a job at a global marketing firm he'd held for three years, lost his home to foreclosure and moved into an apartment in an impoverished neighbourhood in Bridgeport.
Shahzad, 30, is the son of a former top Pakistani air force officer, according to Kifyat Ali, a cousin of Shahzad's father.
He came to the United States in late 1998 on a student visa.
He received a bachelor's degree in computer applications and information systems in 2000.
Shahzad was granted an H1-B visa for skilled workers in 2002. He later returned to the University of Bridgeport to earn a master's in business administration, awarded in 2005.
He worked from mid-2006 to May 2009 as a junior financial analyst for the Affinion Group, a marketing firm in Norwalk.
In 2004, he and his wife, Huma Mian, bought a newly built home for $273,000.
Like her husband, Mian was well educated. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004 with a bachelor of science in business with an emphasis in accounting, the school said.
On her profile on the social networking site Orkut, she described herself as 'not political' and said she spoke English, Pashto, Urdu and French.
She listed her passions as 'fashion, shoes, bags, shopping!! And of course, Faisal.'
She posted a picture of Shahzad, smiling, with the caption, 'what can I say ... he's my everything'.
Last year, the couple abandoned the home, defaulting on the mortgage.
'It was like they just picked up everything they wanted and just left one day,' a neighbour said.
Authorities say Shahzad returned to Pakistan then came back to the United States, when he took an apartment in Bridgeport.
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