Times Square suspect pleads guilty in NYC

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Calling himself a “Muslim soldier,” a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing, saying his attack was the answer to “the U.S. terrorizing ... Muslim people.”

Wearing a white skull cap, Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carried mandatory life prison sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all.

“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” Shahzad calmly told U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who challenged him repeatedly with questions such as whether he worried about killing children in Times Square. “I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier.”

The 30- year-old described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people he could injure or kill.

He revealed that he actually packed his vehicle with three separate bombs, hoping to set off a fertilizer-fueled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks to explode into a fireball.

Shahzad said he expected the bombs to begin going off after he lighted a fuse and waited between 21/2 minutes and five minutes for them to erupt.

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