CASE AGAINST: Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad is in custody and venting his hatred to interrogators. (orkut)
It was payback.
The Connecticut man charged yesterday with the botched Times Square car bombing confessed to trying to slaughter innocent people in retaliation for US drone attacks that wiped out the leadership of his beloved Taliban, The Post has learned.
Admitted terrorist Faisal Shahzad — who copped to training in explosives in the past year with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the leading extremist Islamic group in his native Pakistan — said he was driven to evil by the slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group, law-enforcement sources revealed yesterday.
His training came in a tribal area where American drone aircraft have pummeled members of the Pakistan Taliban and al Qaeda in the past year.
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Sources said he was an eyewitness to the onslaught throughout the eight months he spent in Pakistan beginning last summer.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Times Square bombing attempt immediately after it occurred, saying it was in response to the drone killing of one of its leaders in August — but that claim had been roundly discounted by US authorities at the time.
But by yesterday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Qureshi said, “This is a blowback. This is a reaction. This is retaliation. And you could expect that,” according to CBS News.
READ THE COUNTS AGAINST SHAHZAD
“Let’s not be naive. They’re going to fight back.”
Shahzad’s motive came to light as he admitted leaving a smoldering makeshift bomb containing propane tanks, gasoline canisters, fertilizer and fireworks in a Nissan Pathfinder at West 45th Street and Broadway Saturday evening.
The married father of two young children was slapped with a slew of charges, including acts of terrorism, attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and transporting and using explosives.
In other developments:
* When lawmen pulled Shahzad off an Emirates Airlines flight about to take off from JFK for Dubai, he told them, “I was expecting you. Are you NYPD or FBI?” Newsweek quoted him asking.
* The 30-year-old suspect earlier had managed to slip FBI surveillance. Agents supposed to be tailing him in Bridgeport, Conn., Monday saw him leave a grocery store near his home at 3 p.m. and followed him but later lost him. The plan had been to arrest him at his apartment Monday evening.
Instead, Shahzad was nabbed in the nick of time as he sat on the jet at 11 p.m. He’d managed to board even though his name had been placed on the federal no-fly list at around noon Monday.
* Authorities in Pakistan rounded up as many as eight people in connection with the plot — some of whom are Shahzad’s relatives — although the suspect has insisted that he acted alone.
* President Obama noted that “hundreds of lives” were saved after street vendors notified cops about Shahzad’s smoking Pathfinder. “As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized. We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated,” he said.
* Shahzad did not appear before a judge in Manhattan federal court, and sources said he might not be presented until later this week — partly because he’s still talking to authorities about what he knows. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said the suspect is providing “significant information.”
* Sources told The Post that Shahzad had been known to authorities before the attempted Times Square bomb bid, but did not say why he had come to their attention.
* An Isuzu he left at a JFK parking lot contained a 9mm handgun and two magazine clips of ammunition. It was described as a Kel-Tec automatic pistol with a folding stock and rifle barrel.
When grilled by investigators, Shahzad “admitted he had attempted to detonate a bomb in Times Square. He also said he had recently received five months’ worth of bomb-making instruction in Waziristan, Pakistan,” a criminal complaint says.
Shahzad traveled to Pakistan last July and stayed there until early February, when he returned to Bridgeport.
Among those arrested in Pakistan was Tauhid Ahmed, with whom Shahzad had been communicating via e-mail and whom he’d met at least once.
Also busted was Muhammad Rehan, who was picked up at a mosque associated with militant activity. Shahzad during his trip to Pakistan had met with Rehan.
Investigators were also looking at possible ties between Shahzad and David Headley, another Pakistani American, who pleaded guilty to the 2008 bombings in Mumbai, India, The Daily Beast Web site reported.
The criminal complaint says Shahzad bought the 1993 Pathfinder on April 24 from a person in Connecticut to whom he paid $1,300 in $100 bills after test-driving it in a parking lot.
Shahzad made sure to inspect “the interior seating and cargo area of the Pathfinder, but not the engine” — even though the seller told him the car had some mechanical problems.
Shahzad refused to take a bill of sale for the purchase, showing the seller license plates he already had stolen, the complaint says. He later tinted the windows.
The same day as the purchase, Shahzad received four calls from a telephone in Pakistan on a prepaid cellphone he had bought.
The next day, that phone was used to call a Pennsylvania fireworks store that sells M-88s, like those later found in the Times Square bomb.
Kelly lauded the police work that wrapped up the investigation in 53 hours, 20 minutes — and could think of only one man who could have done it better.
“Now we know that Jack Bauer can do it in 24 minutes,” he said, clearly meaning to say “hours.” “But in the real world, 53 hours . . . is a pretty good number.”