CASE STUDY Case Study
TIMES SQUARE CAR BOMB ATTEMPT
DATE: LOCATION: DETAILS: 1 May 2010 Times Square, New York City, United States Smoke was seen coming from a Nissan
Pathfinder SUV, with its engine and hazard lights on, parked on Times Square at approximately 6.30pm local time. A police officer saw canisters inside the car and the smell of gunpowder. The bomb had ignited but had failed to detonate.
MODUS OPERANDI: The vehicle had been rigged with a gun locker that contained 113kg of a urea-based fertilizer with 120 M-88 firecrackers inside a pressure cooker connected to two alarm clocks fashioned as triggers; 10 gallons of gasoline; gunpowder; 3 x full 20 gallon propane tanks. The car bomb was comprised of four separate explosive components. Had it detonated correctly, the firecrackers would have set off triggering devices attached to the gasoline, which in turn would have created an explosion that would have set off the propane and fertilizer. The improvised explosive device’s ignition malfunctioned and failed to set off the process. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that had it detonated it would have caused a significant fireball, have sprayed shrapnel and killed or wounded many people. A New York Police Department bomb disposal team used a remote-controlled robot to break one of the vehicle’s windows, inspect the contents and disarm the device.
PERPETRATOR: Investigators used the Vehicle Identification Number to trace the last registered owner of the SUV, a female college student. She had recently sold the car to Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old dual Pakistani-US national. Police located his mobile phone number and email address on the seller’s phone and computer and found he had made and received a number of calls to and from Pakistan in the days leading up to the attempted attack. He became a ‘person of interest’ to the authorities and was added to the ‘no fly’ list on 3 May.
Investigators lost track of him that day and Emirates did not check his name against
the list when he purchased a ticket for Dubai and checked-in at JFK Airport later that day. A routine post-boarding check alerted officials to the fact a ‘no fly’ list name was onboard the aircraft. He was arrested as the plane waited to depart the gate. Following his arrest, Shahzad admitted responsibility for the car bomb and that he had received training in militant camps in tribal Waziristan, North Pakistan, from Pakistani Taliban operatives, between December 2009 and January 2010. He claimed that money was sent to him from Pakistan to finance the attack and that he bought all of the bomb components locally. He said he had been inspired by radical preacher Anwar al-Awkali, who advocates violence against the West as a religious duty for all Muslims. In July, a video, made sometime prior to the attempted attack, was broadcast on Al-Arabiya television of Shahzad defending his actions. In it, he claimed he was fighting to avenge the US’ actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to defend weak and oppressed Muslims. Shahzad first came to the US in 1999 as a student, later working in finance for high profile companies in Connecticut. He became a US citizen in 2009 through his marriage to a US national. His father is a retired Pakistani Air Force Vice-Marshall and former Deputy Director General of the country’s Civil Aviation Authority. Shahzad was charged with ten terrorism related offences and pleaded guilty to all of them. He will be sentenced in October.
CLAIMS OF RESPONSIBILITY: As an international link became apparent, an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force took over the investigation. On 9 May the US authorities were quoted in the press as saying that there was growing evidence that the attack was instigated by the Pakistani Taliban. Some military intelligence officials and analysts believe the group has become linked to al-Qaeda. Pakistani security officials arrested over a dozen people in relation to the incident. The Pakistani Taliban had initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but then on 6 May retracted that statement, saying they had no connection to Shahzad, although they welcomed such attacks.
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