‘I DID IT.’ Shahzad admitted to the bomb plot, and pledged more attacks. (AP)
He’s guilty as hell — and proud of it.
Bumbling terrorist Faisal Shahzad yesterday arrogantly admitted trying to detonate a homemade car bomb in Times Square — boasting that he wanted to kill as many of his fellow Americans as possible.
“I want to plead guilty, and I will plead guilty a hundred times over until the United States pulls its troops out of Afghanistan, stops its drone strikes in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops killing the Muslims” Shahzad rambled to a Manhattan federal court judge.
“We will be attacking [the] US, and I plead guilty to that,” Shahzad calmly told Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.
READ THE FULL COURT TRANSCRIPT (PDF)
When Cedarbaum asked, “You wanted to injure a lot of people?” in the botched May 1 attack, the would-be bomber replied matter-of-factly:
“Yes. Damage the building, and injure or kill them.
“One has to consider where I’m coming from — that is, I consider myself a ‘Mujahid,’ a Muslim soldier,” said Shahzad, a naturalized American born in Pakistan.
Sporting a white skullcap, he added, “The US and NATO forces, along with 40 to 50 countries, attacked Muslim lands.”
Cedarbaum shot back, “But the people who were walking in Times Square that night — did you look around to see who they were?”
Shahzad — whose plot was financed by the Pakistani Taliban — retorted, “The people select the government. We consider them all the same.”
“Including the children?” Cedarbaum asked incredulously.
“Well, the [US military] drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody,” Shahzad coolly replied. “They kill women, children — they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.
“I didn’t consider it a crime,” he flippantly said of his fiendish plot. “I don’t care for the laws of the United States.”
Shahzad faces mandatory life in prison when sentenced Oct. 5 for 10 felonies, including trying to use a weapon of mass destruction and commit an act of terror.
Shahzad received no deal from prosecutors despite his reported extensive cooperation with investigators since his May 3 arrest.
Before saying “guilty” 10 times, he appeared happy to detail his crime.
“I rented a place in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and that’s where I made the bomb in the house, and then I put the bomb in my car, in the Nissan Pathfinder, and I drove the Pathfinder to Times Square, in order to explode it,” Shahzad said.
“This was May 1, maybe 6, 6:30-ish, that I got to Times Square. I ignite[d] the fuses, and then I gave the time of 2½ to five minutes, and then I left the car.
“The bomb was, it was in three sections that I made the bomb. That was in the trunk. It was in the cabinet, a gun cabinet. The second was . . . if that didn’t work, then the second would be the cylinder, the gas cylinders I had.
“And the third I had was a petrol, a gas to make fire in the car,” the gabby terror fiend said. “But seems like none of those went off, and I don’t know the reason why they didn’t go off.
“I was waiting to hear a sound,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t hear any sound, so I . . . walked to Grand Central and went home.”
In fact, the device merely fizzled and smoked — then was discovered by a street vendor who notified cops.
Shahzad, a married father of two, said he boarded the train still secretly carrying “a .9mm Kel-Tec SUB 200, a rifle” that he had brought to Times Square “just for self-defense.”
“It’s for killing,” Cedarbaum corrected.
“Self-defense. Not for killing,” the twisted terrorist insisted, unwilling to acknowledge that he could have started a wild gunfight with cops in either Times Square or Grand Central Terminal.
He said he smuggled the fold-up gun in a lap-top case.
“I kept it at home with me,” Shahzad said. “And then I was watching the news, and then after a day or two, I had realized they were getting close. They can’t know where I am, who I am, so I decided to go to JFK and take a plane and try to go back, if I can, and I took the rifle with me to JFK in the car.
“I left [the gun] in the car in the parking. I did not want to take it in the airport, obviously,” he said. “And then I was in the plane [to Dubai], and I was picked up in the plane.”
Shahzad revealed how he had prepared for his ultimate goal — “to wage an attack inside United States of America” — while traveling to his native Pakistan last summer.
First, he visited family in Peshawar. Then, he headed to the lawless border region of Waziristan for guidance from the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a militant extremist group.
“I was given a bomb training,” said Shahzad, an MBA who previously worked in the United States as an analyst for the Elizabeth Arden company and the Affinion Group, a marketing firm.
“The whole thing; how to make a bomb, how to detonate a bomb, how to put a fuse, how many different types of bombs you can make.
“I was there 40 days. My training was five days.”
Either the teachers did a rotten job or he was unusually dense.
Experts have said Shahzad made several errors constructing the bomb, starting with using non-explosive fertilizer and ending by using legal fireworks that could not ignite the chain reaction needed to set off such a device.
Maybe it was the language barrier.
Shahzad said his terror teachers had a bomb-making manual only in their native language, Urdu, “which I’m not good in,” he admitted.
“I had to make one in English,” he said.
Shahzad added that at one point, he had to hit up his Pakistani mentors for more than their criminal know-how. He needed cold, hard cash — which they promptly sent.