Times Square plotter trained at a Lashkar base in PoK

“Shahzad came to us for training. He stayed with us for three months and we provided him with the basics. Then he went back to the US,” the Lashkar commander told Maclean’s,even though he denied any direct involvement in the failed Times Square terror plot.

Stating that Shahzad was brought to the camp by another Lashkar member,the commander recalled Shahzad as an “eager recruit”,“very intelligent but also very intense,and driven to make his mark for the sake of Islam”.

Having already arrested three more Pakistan nationals in the US on the charge of helping Shahzad financially,the US government has rushed CIA Director Leon Panetta and National Security Advisor James Jones to Islamabad to piece together the jigsaw behind the failed terror plot and also to impress upon the Pakistan government the need to crack down on jihadi groups. Under US pressure,Pakistani authorities have also arrested and detained several persons for their alleged linkages with Shahzad.

The assertion that Shahzad travelled undetected between the US and Pakistan a number of times in his search for the right group to back his plans has an uncanny resemblance to the case of 26/11attack accused David Coleman Headley who also undertook several trips to India and Pakistan from the US without surfacing on the security radar.

Recalling the time Shahzad spent at the Dulai camp,the Lashkar commander said they saw in him from the beginning a strong determination to fight the Americans. “We told him we wanted to send him to Kashmir to fight the Indian occupation. But he refused. He said he wanted to fight Americans and that Afghanistan is where he wanted to go. We were hesitant. At that time,we had only loose connections in Afghanistan; our focus was still Kashmir. But we told him,okay,do your training and we’ll see after that,” the commander said.

Another key motivation for Shahzad,as per the commander,was his desire for glory. “He wanted to do something big… not just die an anonymous martyr alongside hundreds of other martyrs. He wanted something international. He wanted to be famous. For us,that was dangerous. We don’t want attention brought to us,and we were worried that Shahzad’s personal agenda would get him captured and bring the spotlight on us,” the commander said.

Shahzad first came to the Lashkar’s old headquarters from where he was taken to a mountain camp for basic training. Once his training got over,the Lashkar asked him to return to the US and not establish any contact with it for the next six months since he was likely to be monitored by American security agencies.

When the Lashkar tried to contact Shahzad after six months,they received no response,either through emails or telephone. “We thought,well,okay,so maybe he’s had a change of heart. Maybe he’s returned to the affairs of the world and the desire for jihad has left him. We have thousands of recruits who come to us for training. It doesn’t affect us if one of them is lost,” the commander said.

Finally,Shahzad,as US authorities now believe,found the backing he was looking for from the Pakistan Taliban and was further trained by the outfit led by Hakimullah Mehsud to carry out the bombing by leaving an explosive in a Nissan Pathfinder SUV in Times Square.