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Terror suspect indicted

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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Denver Post reporter Bruce Finley about the indictment against Najibullah Zazi. The indictment, unveiled today, charges the Afghan-born Colorado resident with conspiracy to build and detonate home-made bombs in the United States.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  The UN Security Council took center stage in New York today.  The council — chaired by President Obama — passed a resolution aimed at stopping nuclear proliferation.  We’ll have more on that in a moment.  But first, to another story out of New York today.  A federal indictment was unveiled there against Najibullah Zazi.  The 24-year-old Afghan man was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.  Authorities say Zazi was plotting to make homemade bombs and set them off in the United States.  Zazi is a permanent US resident who was living in Colorado.  He worked as an airport shuttle bus driver in Denver.  Bruce Finley of the Denver Post is covering the story.  Now Mr. Zazi has been indicted on charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against persons or property in the US.  What do we know about how strong the evidence is so far?

BRUCE FINLEY: Hi Marco.  Well, the indictment that was unsealed this morning is relatively brief:  two pages.  But the investigators have laid out a bit more of what they have in a memo the government filed in support of their motion to keep Najibullah Zazi detained.  As you know, he was arrested last Saturday, and he’s been held in the Denver County Jail.  Now, it looks as if those proceedings will be dropped and he’ll be moved to New York.  But in that memo, the document says he worked with associates collecting bomb making supplies from Denver area shops, particularly beauty supply stores, cooked ingredients in an Aurora hotel room (Aurora’s a suburb of Denver), and sought help to produce bombs before he traveled to New York September 10^th.  So it begins to show a little bit of what the government may have, and what the FBI agents have described as you say, as a plot to detonate homemade bombs in the United States.

WERMAN: In that supporting memo, were there any other details such as the type of materials, the device, or size of explosion that it might cause?

FINLEY: Yes, this summer in the, Denver area—July and august—he allegedly shopped in various beauty supply shops, purchasing hydrogen peroxide and acetone products.  This document makes reference to surveillance videos and receipts indicating various products:  liquid developer, [PH] cloroxide, and it also contains high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide.  There’s also a reference to records from a nearby hotel in Aurora indicating that Zazi checked into a suite on august 28^th and that suite included a stove.  The government has also said an individual associated with Zazi purchased some of these products around Denver.  The FBI investigators also found that Zazi rented the same hotel suite early in September.  And that subsequent FBI testing revealed the presence of a chemical residue in a vent above the stove.

WERMAN: And when the indictment says “weapons of mass destruction,” they’re talking about bombs, or is it possibly something even larger?

FINLEY: Apparently they’re talking about homemade bombs, that’s the charge in the documents released Sunday.  He’s been indicted by a grand jury, in New York, accused of conspiring to use weapons…but apparently that’s bombs that would be detonated in the US according to the  government..

WERMAN: In a nutshell, who is against Najibullah Zazi?  We know he drives a shuttle bus at the airport. What else do you know about him?

FINLEY: Yes, quite a great team effort in my newsroom.  We actually tracked down Najibullah Zazi last Tuesday and I spoke first with a couple of his relatives, then I interviewed him once face to face in the doorway of his apartment, and later a few times by phone.  But he came from [INAUDIBLE] province in Afghanistan as a boy, To [PH] Kashiwa, the border city in Pakistan, and then as about a 14 year old, he moved to New York.  Queens.  He went to house there in Queens and came out here in January.

WERMAN: And when you stood in the doorway with him for those few minutes interviewing him, did he strike you as a mass murderer?

FINLEY: It was an awkward situation, there.  It was Ramadan, near sunset, he was barefoot, his father was shaving and peering out behind him.  He confirmed a lot of the details that we gleaned from relatives about his family story and insisted he doesn’t have any connection to this terrorism.

WERMAN: Bruce Finley of The Denver Post.  Thank you very much.

FINLEY: Thanks, Marco.  The pleasure is mine.

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