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Shahzad pleads guilty to Times Square bombing charges
By: cnn.comPosted On: 06/22/2010 1:45 P
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Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American suspect in the failed Times Square bombing case, entered pleas of guilty Monday in federal court to all 10 counts he was facing.
Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American suspect in the failed Times Square bombing case, entered pleas of guilty Monday in federal court to all 10 counts he was facing.
Shahzad, wearing a white skullcap, gray prison jumpsuit and orange T-shirt, was wearing handcuffs as he was escorted into the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.
Before entering his pleas, he told the court: "I want to plead guilty 100 times because unless the United States pulls out of Afghanistan and Iraq, until they stop drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen and stop attacking Muslim lands, we will attack the United States and be out to get them."
Cedarbaum then placed Shahzad under oath and asked him questions about the crime.
A law enforcement source told CNN the decision to plead guilty was Shahzad's.
Shahzad is accused of attempting to set off the botched vehicle bomb in Times Square on May 1. He was arrested two days later while trying to leave the country on a flight from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Shahzad said he traveled to Waziristan in Pakistan on December 9 with two friends to join the Taliban. He said that during the five days he was there, the Taliban gave him $4,000, which he combined with $4,900 of his own money to pay for the materials used in the attack.
In a news release, the Justice Department said Shahzad received explosives training from Tehrik-e-Taliban, a militant extremist group in Pakistan. In February, it said, he received approximately $5,000 in cash in Massachusetts sent from a co-conspirator in Pakistan who Shahzad believed worked for Tehrik-e-Taliban and he received $7,000 more in Ronkonkoma, New York, which was also sent at the co-conspirator's direction.
"Once I got back to the states, I started working on the plan," he said. "Getting together what I needed for the bomb. I rented a place in Bridgeport, Connecticut. That is where I built the bomb, put it in the Pathfinder and drove it to Times Square."
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