A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, Shahzad Faisal, was trying to leave the country Monday night at John F Kennedy International Airport when he was picked up by Customs and Border Protection agents, Williams reported.
The suspect in the Times Square bomb attempt has been arrested. He is identified as Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani American. He is a naturalized citizen.
For background information on this story, please read this New York Times article.
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I have to commend our investigators in the NYPD and the FBI who worked on this. Very quick turnaround. Also props to the Obama admin for making sure this guy got got, while dealing with the oil cartel's mess and the flooding. Talk about being able to handle complexity! I also think it says something about how terrorism like this, if left to professional investigators and not muddied by politics and militarism, it's the best way to go. Good work and let's round up whoever else was involved.
Update [2010-5-4 1:53:4 by banderson]: According to Holder, the suspect was trying to fly to Dubai.
And honestly this is just weird:
... the man's name was on an e-mail that was sent to the seller of the car last month, as well as other evidence suggesting he had a role in the attempted bombing.
He used an email with his real name? And then tried to get away?
Update [2010-5-4 2:15:50 by banderson]:
I have to comment on all this talk below about whether the terrorist would turn out to be a Tea Partier or a militia member. I've been monitoring that discussion very intently over the past few days and I must stress that I've been very pleased with how responsible DailyKos and other liberals in general have been wrt to hurling those accusations, even after the initial person of interest was reported as white by the MSM. Yes, some commenters made assumptions, but that sort of talk was always met with skepticism by many and the proper perspective by most. The reality is that in this country there seem to be essentially two scenarios that can unfold at this point when we hear about terrorism, two kinds of people/groups that typically end up being involved. And that says quite a lot in and of itself. If I were the Tea Partiers, I wouldn't be too quick to dwell on the question of why Americans might think they're involved in terrorism. I don't think that's a discussion that's going to go well for them. But I do have to say that I've been very pleased with the responsible behavior here on Kos as this story unfolded, despite all the red meat being thrown around in the MSM by various pundits.