Armed anti-terror agents yesterday stormed three Queens homes hunting for bomb-making materials allegedly sought by a suspected “al Qaeda associate” — a dragnet sparked by President Obama’s visit, law-enforcement sources said.
The suspect — described as a Queens-born man in his late 20s who has an Afghani father — had been under surveillance by the FBI in Denver, where he lives. But the investigation quickly turned to New York as intelligence indicated he was heading here to obtain bomb-making materials, sources said.
Hiking concerns was the suspected terrorist sympathizer’s sudden, suspicious drive in a rental car from Denver to Flushing to visit local contacts as Obama hit town, the sources said.
The man had been in New York for about a week when the raids were unleashed — and he suddenly hot-footed it back to Denver by plane out of La Guardia, sources said.
Still, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who received a classified briefing of the events, said, “There was nothing imminent,” and denied that the raids were tied to Obama’s visit.
One New York man was arrested as the emergency search warrants were executed.
The man, whose name was withheld, had allegedly notified an imam that the FBI was looking for their Denver pal, and the Muslim leader, in turn, contacted the suspect’s family to have them warn him.
Authorities believe the people whom the “al Qaeda associate” met with locally share Osama bin Laden’s hard-core anti-American and radical Islamist ideology, sources said.
Akhari Amanullah said agents busted down the door to the apartment on 41st Avenue in Flushing that he shares with several other Afghani immigrants at around 2:30 a.m.
“They held a gun to my face . . . I don’t know what they were looking for,” he told the Times-Ledger Newspapers. “They had me for about three hours.”
Amanullah, who called himself “a hard-working” cabby, said his computer and cellphone were taken. Two of his roommates remained in custody, he said.
The 137th Street home of a Bosnian family — including a father, mother, adult son and daughter — was also raided, said John Choe, a City Council candidate from Flushing.
The third home, on Parsons Boulevard in Flushing, was hit around 7 a.m. when about 10 unmarked cars, sedans and SUVs pulled up as helicopters buzzed overhead, witnesses said.
About three dozen agents, armed with submachine guns and wearing bulletproof vests marked FBI, stormed the top floor of a three-story, red-brick apartment house.
Schoolchildren waiting for buses were brushed aside as the officers brought down several cardboard evidence boxes from an apartment.
The combined team of NYPD and FBI agents was looking specifically for bomb-making materials such as fuses, timers, explosive gels, powders and TNT, sources said.
No materials were found, sources said.
One source said the suspected al Qaeda associate recently traveled to Afghanistan.