Faisal Shahzad’s video aired by TV channel

The man arrested for plotting a car bombing in New York’s Times Square appeared in a video on Al-Arabiya television on Wednesday in which he said he planned to attack the US.

“This attack on the US will be a revenge for all the mujahedeen ... and oppressed Muslims, including ... Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, said Faisal Shahzad.

The recording, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, was made in English and had an Arabic voiceover.

“I will carry this attack on their behalf, and I hope that it will please Muslims,” the Pakistani-American Shahzad said in the first video linking him to the abortive May 1 bomb plot and al Qaeda.

“With jihad, the basis of Islam can be enforced and the word of Allah and his religion will prevail,” he said.

“Abandoning jihad destroys the religion and puts Muslims in an insulting position as they get robbed of land and authority,” he added.

Wearing a black turban and trimmed beard, Shahzad appeared in a video that carried the “Umar Media” brand, with an AK-47 rifle apparently added by video editing, to his left.

“Eight years have passed since the war in Afghanistan. You will see that the Muslims’ war has just started, and we will tell you how Islam will spread all over the world,” he said, reading at some point from a book.

Dubai-based Al-Arabiya said the video was 40-minutes long. It said Shahzad appeared in the video with Faqir Mohammed, the Taliban leader in Bajaur, but that footage was not aired.

Thirty-year-old Shahzad, who was charged with international terrorism, allegedly drove a Nissan sports utility vehicle crammed with a large but malfunctioning bomb into Manhattan’s busiest neighbourhood.

He was arrested just before his flight left New York’s JFK airport and 53 hours after police found the homemade bomb smouldering in the SUV parked outside a theatre.

The notorious Zarqawi, who orchestrated a bloody campaign of attacks and beheadings, was killed north of Baghdad in a US air strike in 2006 after long eluding capture as Iraq’s most-wanted fugitive.

The only group to have claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing was the Pakistani militant group Tehreek-i-Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15th, 2010.