News organizations ask judge to unseal plea agreement in NYC subway bomb plot case

News outlets: Unseal NYC terror plea agreement

NEW YORK — The Associated Press and Newsday have asked a judge to make public a sealed plea agreement between prosecutors and a man who admitted he plotted to bomb the city’s subway system in the days following the Sept. 11 anniversary.

A federal judge sealed prosecutors’ agreement with Najibullah Zazi, a 25-year-old former Colorado airport shuttle driver who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges this week. Zazi admitted hatching a plot to make homemade bombs and use them to launch a rush-hour attack; he was arrested before he could follow through on his plan.

Zazi’s attorneys and prosecutors asked for the agreement to be sealed, said Robert Nardoza, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. That request also was sealed.

Nardoza declined further comment Wednesday. Zazi attorney William Stampur did not immediately return a telephone message left Wednesday by The Associated Press.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Dearie on Tuesday, Newsday reporter John Riley said a report that Zazi’s relatives had been threatened with prosecution to persuade Zazi to cooperate with investigators was among the reasons the plea agreement should be made public.

He said the documents may contain information on any pressure applied to Zazi.

“The court should not make itself complicit in keeping secret information that would allow the public to assess for itself the appropriateness of the tactics used and concessions made,” Riley’s letter said.

The AP joined Newsday’s request Wednesday, and Bloomberg News planned to do so Thursday. The AP said in a letter that the documents have to be made public “absent findings that sealing is essential to protect some overriding interest, and even then any sealing order must be narrowly tailored in scope and time.”

Karen Kaiser, assistant general counsel for the AP, said, “The public is entitled to see the plea agreement and the motion to seal in this case, which involves a U.S. citizen who admits to having been recruited by al-Qaida to commit violent crimes in his own country.”

The judge on Tuesday set a deadline for Friday for lawyers to respond to the media outlets’ requests.

Zazi was accused of buying beauty supplies to make bombs. He said U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, his native land, was the driving force behind his decision to conduct an al-Qaida-led operation.

Zazi admitted using notes taken at a Pakistan training camp to build homemade explosives and bringing them in September to New York, where he planned to detonate them. Police officers who stopped him for a routine traffic violation grew suspicious, allowing him to go free but keeping an eye on him.

Days later, authorities raided several Queens apartments, including a friend’s home where Zazi had stayed.

Zazi faces a sentence of life in prison without parole at his sentencing in June.