FBI agents investigating what they describe as a plot to detonate homemade bombs in the United States released documents Sunday asserting that an Aurora airport-shuttle driver admitted to al-Qaeda training and had bomb-making notes in his laptop.
Today, 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed, 53, are scheduled to make initial appearances in federal court.
They’ve been held in Denver County Jail since late Saturday, when FBI agents raided their apartment and arrested them on nonterrorism charges of making false statements.
The Zazis had broken off voluntary talks with the FBI after three days of questioning.
A New York imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, identified as a police informant, also faces charges of making false statements in that state. If convicted, each faces up to eight years in prison.
Zazi’s attorney, Art Folsom, preferred not to comment on the affidavits, spokeswoman Wendy Aiello said Sunday.
“He is at work,” she said, “preparing for court.”
Zazi and his father have repeatedly insisted they’ve done nothing wrong.
No evidence has been presented to substantiate the international plot that FBI agents announced in arrest affidavits. Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris said authorities have “no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack.”
He said the arrests “are part of an ongoing and fast-paced investigation.”
Federal authorities based their arrests on alleged false statements made in interviews with the FBI and during “legally authorized electronic surveillance.”
Najibullah Zazi, they said, gave a false story about notes on his computer. Mohammed Zazi, according to the affidavits, did not truthfully answer questions about whom he spoke with in New York. And Afzali is alleged to have provided conflicting statements on what he told Zazi during a phone call.
The affidavits reveal that FBI agents put Zazi under surveillance in Colorado sometime after he returned from a nearly five-month visit to Pakistan that started in August 2008.
Najibullah Zazi’s father and his aunt and uncle have said that Zazi went to Pakistan to visit his wife in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border city of Peshawar.
According to an affidavit, Afghanistan-born Zazi during questioning in Denver on Thursday and Friday admitted attending courses “at an al-Qaeda training facility in the FATA (tribal) region of Pakistan” and that “he received instruction from al-Qaeda operatives on subjects such as weapons and explosives.”
Zazi’s trip, calls monitored
Federal authorities continued their surveillance as Zazi rented a car in Denver on Sept. 9 and drove to New York, documents show. Zazi and his father have said he went there to deal with a business matter involving a coffee cart he owns.
While he was there, police stopped him on a bridge leading into the city and later, when the vehicle was parked, searched for evidence and had the vehicle towed.
Zazi flew back to Colorado and learned from friends who called him that FBI agents had raided three locations in the New York City borough of Queens.
Federal agents on Sept. 11 intercepted a phone conversation in which Mohammed Zazi at one point asks his son in New York: “What has happened? What have you guys done?” the affidavits say.
Afzali, who apparently had known the Zazis in New York, advises Najibullah Zazi in a later call: “Don’t get involved in Afghanistan garbage, Iraq garbage,” and then tells him their “phone call is being monitored” and asks if there was any “evidence” in his car, the affidavits say.
During the search of the rental car, the affidavits say, authorities found a laptop containing a jpeg image of handwritten bomb-making notes. The notes “contain formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, explosives detonators and components of a fuzing system.”
An affidavit says the search of a New York apartment where Zazi stayed turned up a black scale and several batteries — and that testing detected Zazi’s fingerprints.
Zazi allegedly told the FBI in Denver “that if the handwritten notes was found on his computer, he must have unintentionally downloaded it as part of a religious book he had downloaded in August. He states that he had immediately deleted the religious book within days of downloading it after realizing that its contents discussed jihad,” the affidavit said.
The arrest document said the handwritten notes were sent from an e-mail account in Peshawar, Pakistan, in December 2008 to Zazi.
Prosecutors in court paperwork indicated they would detain Zazi but not his father.
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
