Faisal Shahzad: Accused of Terrorism

Faisal Shahzad: Accused of Terrorism

Parts of the New Yok City's Times Square were evacuated when a car bomb was discovered on the night of May 1. Fifty-three hours later, a liberal Pakistani-American with an MBA degree from the US, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested just as he was leaving the country aboard a flight to Dubai (Right: Faisal Shahzad with his wife Huma Mian in a photograph from Mian's Orkut profile and circulated on the Internet by Associated Press).

Pakistani-American community felt embarassed. Time magazine and like-minded writers accused Pakistan of posing a permanent threat to world peace ('Beyond Times Square: the threat from Pakistan' was the heading of a piece from Bobby Ghosh in Time while Sadanand Dhume, author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist quickly contributed 'Why Pakistan Produces Jihadists' to Wall Street Journal).

However, it was interesting to note how quickly and seriously this time the incident sparked skepticism from circles outside the usual right-leaning Pakistanis themselves. Dhume's article reappeared on The Information Clearing House website with the caption 'Classic example of anti-Islamic Propaganda'. Gordon Duff, a war veteran wrote 'Times Square Bomb Hoax, Israeli Intel Group Shows Its Hand' for Veterans Today:
Who would have believed it? Only days after a warning of an Israeli 'false flag' bombing against the US 'in the works' a massive car bomb is discovered in Times Square! Better yet, though no intelligence organization in the world could discover anyone claiming responsibility for this embarrassing failure, SITE Intelligence, a group rumored as the 'voice of the Mossad' has placed the blame on the Pakistani Taliban.
Duff goes on to say that the Site Intelligence finds are "not only timely for Israel, when the world is focused on claims they have been planning a ‘dirty bomb’ attack to send the US to war against Iran, but always tend to support mysterious organizations run from the caves of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region... With the signature of this bombing being so close to that of the 'crotch bombing,' an attack with Israeli fingerprints from Nigeria to Yemen to Amsterdam, the 'superfast' accusation against a Pakistani group was no surprise.”