A 30-year-old Pakistani American, Faisal Shahzad, will be sentenced in court today. He plotted an attack in the highly busy Times Square on the 1st of May,2010.
The cold blooded and calculative way in which he went about the planning have left the prosecutors little choice but to demand a sentence of life imprisonment. He used webcams to find out the time of the day when the Times Square would be at its busiest. He was aware that he had to choose a time when the pedestrian population would be at its highest to cause the maximum damage. He attempted setting off a vehicle bomb which somehow failed to detonate. He was arrested whilst boarding a flight to Pakistan two days later. He had no regrets for his attempt. He claimed he would have set off another bomb in New York two weeks later had he not been arrested. He claimed these bombing attempts would continue till America pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq and stopped attacking the Muslim land.
He had received both the technical know how and financial support from the TTP. He had spent over a month with the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan to undergo training with an experienced bomb trainer.
Shahzad also made a 40-minute video for the Taliban which shows clippings of the Times Square on one side while Faisal quoted from the Quran on the other side. He also announces his clear intention to wage the holy war or jihad against the Americans from within. He wanted to target Americans on a large scale. He wanted to continue conducting attacks till he was captured or killed.
He pleaded guilty to all the 10 counts and seemed quite remorseless about the attempt at bombing.
