Official: More questioned in NYC terror probe

[September 24, 2009]  NEW YORK (AP) -- Casting a wide net in a neighborhood where high-profile raids prompted nationwide terror warnings, investigators searched for anyone who might have been behind the alleged terror plot beyond an airport shuttle driver and two others, authorities said.

The driver, Najibullah Zazi, his father and New York City imam Ahmad Wais Afzali all were scheduled to be in court for detention hearings later Thursday in Denver and New York. Authorities say they found bomb-making instructions on a hard drive on Zazi's laptop computer but still were unsure of the specific target or scope of a possible terrorist attack.

The 24-year-old Zazi -- whom authorities have linked to al-Qaida -- his father and Afzali have been charged with lying to FBI investigators trying to uncover the terror plot. Zazi met with his attorneys in Colorado on Wednesday. His father, Mohammed Zazi, was expected to be freed on $50,000 bail after Thursday's hearing.

The arrests came after the raids of several apartments in the Queens neighborhood, where Zazi had driven from Denver to visit earlier this month, and were followed by a flurry of nationwide warnings of possible strikes on transit, sports and entertainment complexes.

On Wednesday, hundreds of federal agents and NYPD investigators again fanned out in the neighborhood where apartments were searched -- and backpacks and cell phones removed -- over a week ago, to re-interview "people previously encountered" during previous raids there, and to locate others who know them, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the probe.

The effort also includes a review of phone and other records that could link potential suspects to one another or identify new ones.

"Many of the people we've spoken to have been cooperative," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the investigation is ongoing.

The official said business owners also are on the list of possible witnesses in a potential homemade-bomb plot. The official declined to identify those businesses, but authorities regularly monitor sales by suppliers of chemicals that could be used in improvised explosives.

But questions lingered about whether early missteps hindered the investigation. A criminal complaint suggests police acting without the FBI's knowledge might have inadvertently blown the surveillance and forced investigators' hand by questioning Afzali -- considered a trusted police source in the community -- about Zazi and other possible plotters.

The imam, it says, turned around and tipped off Zazi by calling him the next day and saying in a recorded conversation, "They asked me about you guys."

The detectives referred to in the recently unsealed criminal complaint work for a division that operates independently from an FBI-run terrorism task force.

Police officials say that their investigators reached out to Afzali -- showing him pictures of four possible suspects to identify, including Zazi -- only after receiving fresh information from the terrorism task force that a terrorism plot was possibly in progress.

In a joint statement, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Joe Demarest, head of the FBI office in New York, denied reports that the questioning of Afzali and his alleged betrayal had caused a rift between the agencies.

The New York Times, quoting unnamed current and former police officials, reported in Thursday editions that the New York Police Department transferred two commanders this week, including one from its counterterrorism bureau. NYPD top spokesman Paul Browne would not confirm the transfers or comment late Wednesday.

[Associated Press; By TOM HAYS and DEVLIN BARRETT]

Barrett reported from Washington. Associated Press writer P. Solomon Banda in Denver contributed to this report.

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