Shahzad's life to see if the Pakistani-American man, who was charged on Tuesday afternoon connection with the Times Square car-bomb plot, was a lone wolf or part of a terrorism cell. Shahzad reportedly told U.S. law-enforcement officers that he acted alone, in statements allegedly implicating himself in the failed attack following his arrest at JFK International Airport on a Dubai-bound flight. It's still not known if Shahzad is a member of the Pakistani Taliban or any other militant group. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, May 4, that the suspect was cooperating and providing valuable intelligence, although he declined to specify what the authorities had learned about the plot thus far, so as not to compromise the ongoing investigation.
Shahzad had reportedly returned to the U.S. in February after spending a number of months in Pakistan, where he traveled after becoming a naturalized American in April 2009. Pakistani officials say Shahzad is of Kashmiri descent and the son of a former top Pakistani air-force officer. On his latest Pakistani passport application, he had given his nationality as Kashmiri — a fact that some analysts suspect might tie him to those militant groups based in Pakistan that were originally formed to fight Indian control of the divided territory. An official in Islamabad said Pakistani authorities are investigating whether he had ties to any Kashmiri jihadist groups. During his latest spell in Pakistan, Shahzad was also said to have spent significant time in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, where the government has waged a fierce war against Taliban militants. A Pakistani government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TIME on Tuesday that the suspect had had ties with militants while in Pakistan. "He was here at a training camp," the source said. The legal complaint against Shahzad, which charged him with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, said he admitted to receiving bombmaking training in Waziristan, the lawless tribal region where the Pakistani Taliban operates with near impunity.
Pakistani officials claim that there have been a number of arrests in Karachi of people suspected by authorities of having a connection with the suspect. "There will be more arrests before the night is out," a senior government source told TIME. Other reports suggest that one man held in Pakistan allegedly spent time with Shahzad during his stay there and was said to have hired a pickup truck and driven with the suspect from Karachi to Peshawar, long a hotbed of militancy.
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