Authorities in Pak have been uncharacteristically swift in rounding up a number of people for questioning, as US investigators try to piece together the actions and motivations of Faisal Shahzad who comes from a wealthy family.
In a far cry from the lethargic and tardy cooperation India gets from Pakistan in dealing with all things terrorism related, Islamabad went out on a limb on Wednesday to help US investigators get additional leads into the Time Square bomb plot.
Pakistan-born Faisal Shahzad, who became a US citizen last year, has admitted he tried to blow up an explosives-laden Nissan Pathfinder in bustling Times Square on Saturday evening and has told the FBI he received bomb-making training in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan.
Authorities in Pakistan have been uncharacteristically swift in rounding up a number of people for questioning, as US investigators try to piece together the actions and motivations of Shahzad who comes from a wealthy Pakistani family.
CNN quoted a Pakistani official as saying that Shahzad’s associate Muhammed Rehan, who was allegedly instrumental in making possible a meeting between Shahzad and at least one senior Taliban leader, was detained by Pakistan in relation to the probe.
The official said Rehan drove Shahzad on July 7 in a pickup truck to Peshawar and they headed to Waziristan, where they met senior Taliban leaders. Rehan is believed to have links to Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is close to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.
Iftikhar Mian, Shahzad’s father-in-law, and friend Tauseef Ahmed were also reportedly picked up in Karachi along with other family members but they have not been formally arrested.
“Pakistan and the US are working very closely… Shahzad is being interrogated and depending on whatever emerges, we will pick up the pieces… We are cooperating 100% with the US and will get to the bottom of this,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani said. Richard Holbrooke, US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, also spoke with Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and extracted a promise of full cooperation.
US officials said Shahzad, 30, is cooperating with investigators.
Shahzad is from a Pakistani family of wealth and privilege. His father, Bahar Ul Haq, was a vice-marshal in the air force. His brother is a mechanical engineer in Canada, a sister is a doctor at a hospital in Peshawar, and another sister worked as a school teacher. The Associated Press said Shahzad’s wife was an American of Pakistani descent who, according to her Orkut page, liked shopping, American TV comedies and “partying every night”.
The conventional wisdom, embraced by most people and even the World Bank, is that desperately poor quarters are a fertile breeding ground for terrorism. The truth is that poverty makes far less of a difference and as a group, terrorists are better educated and come from wealthier families, says Princeton economics professor Alan Krueger.
“I have found in my work that people who participate in terrorism by and large are from middle-class or upper income families. They tend to be college educated and even better educated that those in the population they come from,” Krueger, author of What Makes a Terrorist, told DNA.
At least seven of the eight people arrested in the failed car bombings in Britain in 2007 were middle class doctors.
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