National/World

Prosecutors: NYC man determined to bomb subways

Monday, April 16, 2012
FILE - In this Sept. 17, 2009 file photo, Najibullah Zazi leaves his apartment in Aurora, Colo., for a meeting with his attorney. When New York undercover officers and informants were infiltrating a mosque in Queens in 2006, they failed to notice the increasingly radical sentiments of a young man who prayed there. Police also kept tabs on a Muslim student group at Queens College, but missed a members growing anti-Americanism. Those two men and friends _ Zazi at the mosque and Adis Medunjanin at the school _ would go on to be accused of plotting a subway bombing that officials have called the most serious terrorist threat to the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

FILE - In this Sept. 17, 2009 file photo, Najibullah Zazi leaves his apartment in Aurora, Colo., for a meeting with his attorney. When New York undercover officers and informants were infiltrating a mosque in Queens in 2006, they failed to notice the increasingly radical sentiments of a young man who prayed there. Police also kept tabs on a Muslim student group at Queens College, but missed a member's growing anti-Americanism. Those two men and friends _ Zazi at the mosque and Adis Medunjanin at the school _ would go on to be accused of plotting a subway bombing that officials have called the most serious terrorist threat to the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

Prosecutors say a New York City man became an al-Qaida operative determined to bomb the subways.

Adis Madunjanin (ah-DEES' may-DOON'-yah-neen) went on trial Monday in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service disclosed that it has struck a rare deal with a convicted terrorist to offer evidence in Medunjanin's trial.

Saajid Badat was jailed in Britain in 2005 for his role in a 2001 plot to down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in shoes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Looman told jurors in his opening statement that Medunjanin was enlisted as a would-be suicide bomber in a foiled plot in 2009 to kill innocent subway riders.

The defense was to make its opening statement later Monday.

(Copyright ©2013 WPVI-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Get more National/World »


Tags:
new york, al-qaida, terrorism, trial, national/world
comments
Advertisement