Author: Tom Hays
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 5, 2010
URL: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/5/times-square-bomber-faces-sentencing-nyc/
The Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate
a car bomb on a busy Saturday night in Times Square accepted a life sentence
with a smirk Tuesday and warned that Americans can expect more bloodshed at
the hands of Muslims.
"Brace yourselves, because the war with
Muslims has just begun," Faisal Shahzad, 31, told a federal judge. "Consider
me the first droplet of the blood that will follow."
His punishment for building the propane-and-gasoline
bomb and driving it into the heart of the city in a sport utility vehicle
in May was a foregone conclusion because the charges to which he pleaded guilty
carried a mandatory life sentence, which under federal rules will keep him
behind bars until he dies.
But the former budget analyst from Connecticut
used the courtroom appearance to rail against the U.S., saying the country
will continue to pay for occupying Muslim countries.
"We are only Muslims … but if you
call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing
you," he told U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.
Shahzad - brought into the courtroom in handcuffs
and wearing a long beard and white skullcap - had instructed his attorney
not to speak, and Judge Cedarbaum told prosecutors that she didn't need to
hear from them.
That left the two free to spar over his reasoning
for giving up his comfortable life in the U.S. to train in Pakistan and carry
out an attack that authorities say could have killed an untold number of pedestrians.
"You appear to be someone who was capable
of education, and I do hope you will spend some of the time in prison thinking
carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people,"
Judge Cedarbaum said.
Shahzad responded that the "Koran gives
us the right to defend. And that's all I'm doing."
The judge cut him off at one point to ask
whether he had sworn allegiance to the U.S. when he became a citizen last
year.
"I did swear, but I did not mean it,"
Shahzad said.
In his address to the court, he said Osama
bin Laden "will be known as no less than Saladin of the 21st-century
crusade" - a reference to the Muslim hero of the Crusades. He also said:
"If I'm given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all for the life of
Allah."
Shahzad smirked when the judge imposed the
sentence. Asked whether he had any final words, he said, "I'm happy with
the deal that God has given me."
Afterward, the head of the FBI's New York
office, Janice K. Fedarcyk, cited evidence that Shahzad hoped to strike more
than once.
"Shahzad built a mobile weapon of mass
destruction and hoped and intended that it would kill large numbers of innocent
people and planned to do it again two weeks later," Ms. Fedarcyk said.
"The sentence imposed today means Shahzad will never pose that threat
again."
Calling himself a Muslim soldier, Shahzad
pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts. He said the Pakistani
Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training
late last year and early this year, months after he became a U.S. citizen.
For greatest impact, he chose a crowded a
section of Times Square by studying an online streaming video of the so-called
Crossroads of the World, prosecutors said.
On May 1, he ignited the fuse of his crude
bomb packed in a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, then walked away, pausing to listen
for the explosion that never came, court papers said. A street vendor spotted
smoke coming from the SUV and alerted police, who quickly cleared the area.
The bomb attempt set off an intense investigation
that culminated two days later when investigators plucked Shahzad off a Dubai-bound
plane at a New York airport.
