Pakistani man sought in Times Square bomb scare

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - American authorities are seeking the arrest of a man from Pakistan who has been identified as the owner of the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was used in the failed car bombing in Times Square, according to the New York Times.

Identified as a naturalised US citizen from Pakistan who recently returned from a trip there, the Connecticut resident bought the sport utility vehicle in Bridgeport within the last three weeks, paying cash in a deal that involved no formal paperwork, the daily said citing several people briefed on the investigation.

The breakthrough came as he investigation was shifted on Monday to the control of the international terrorism branch of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency group led by the Justice Department, the Times said citing two unnamed officials.

Responsibility for the investigation shifted to the task force as the incident increasingly appears to have been coordinated by more than one person in a plot with international links, the Washington Post reported also citing unnamed officials.

The Post cited a US official who, recounting a conversation with intelligence officials, said, “Don’t be surprised if you find a foreign nexus … They’re looking at some tell-tale signs and they’re saying it’s pointing in that direction.”

Officials cautioned that even if the investigation pointed toward an international link, rather than domestic or anti-government organizations, that did not mean Al Qaeda or a similar group was involved, the Post said.

The White House officially branded the incident an act of terrorism. “Anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“And I would say that whoever did that would be categorized as a terrorist, yes.”

New York police meanwhile is seeking a white man in his 40s captured on a security video looking “in a furtive manner” over his shoulder in the direction of the SUV rigged to explode that was left abandoned in one of the America’s busiest neighbourhoods.

The contents of the Pathfinder - a tidy arsenal every bit as dangerous as it appeared to be amateurish in its design and execution - included gasoline, fireworks, analog alarm clocks and propane tanks, the police said.

Eight bags of fertiliser found inside a metal gun locker were not explosive, the police said, and the fuse on the bomb appears to have ignited part of the vehicle’s interior, drawing the attention of two street vendors, who alerted a mounted police officer.

Had the bomb exploded, it “would have caused casualties, a significant fireball,” Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner told CNN.

The materials will be sent to the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginina, for analysis, Kelly said in an interview Monday morning with WCBS Radio. “They’ve got the top laboratory in the world to do these sorts of examinations, and we’ll keep some samples here,” he said.

Investigators are reported to be reviewing similarities between the incident in Times Square and coordinated attacks in the summer of 2007 at a Glasgow airport and a London neighbourhood of nightclubs and theatres.

Both attacks involved cars containing propane and gasoline that did not explode. Those attacks, the authorities believe, had their roots in Iraq.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)