A federal judge today released the audio tape of a 911 call made by a man accused of plotting a suicide bomb attack in New York’s subways, as officials say he launched a last-ditch effort to kill someone by deliberately crashing his car into another vehicle.
Adis Medunjanin panicked after FBI agents searched his residence in January 2010, and later jumped in his car, sped off at 90 mph, and then slammed into another car on the Whitestone Expressway, a FBI agent testified in Brooklyn federal court.
“He thought this would be an act of jihad – that there would be an explosion and this would kill people,” FBI special agent Farbod Azad told a judge last March at a hearing about the incident.
Moments before the collision at the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, Medunjanin had called 911 to announce his intentions, the agent said.
“We love death … you love your life!” he said in Arabic.
Brooklyn federal Judge Raymond Dearie ordered the release of the audio tape of Medunjanin’s call, which was played in court at a pre-trial hearing last year, but was not released until today.
After he was detained following the car crash, Medunjanin confessed that he caused the collision because he believed it was his last chance to wage jihad before his impending arrest and lifetime incarceration.
“[Medunjanin] viewed himself as a prisoner of war, caught on the battlefield,” Azad testified.
Medunjanin then suggested that he could be traded for a US soldier held captive by the Taliban.
The FBI agent also revealed that authorities were tipped off to Medunjanin’s enrollment at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan by an unnamed informant based in that southwest Asian nation.
The 27-year-old is scheduled to stand trial next month for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on New York City’s subways.
Federal prosecutors say that Medunjanin — who is from Queens — along with alleged fellow-subway plotters Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, journeyed to Pakistan to undergo instruction in making bombs out of household chemicals at an al Qaeda terror training camp in Wazirstan.
His childhood friends, Zazi and Ahmedzay already have pleaded guilty to terror-related charges stemming from the New York City subway plot.
The scheme was halted after FBI agents arrested the trio, official said.