Metro

Would-be NYC subway bomber Najibullah Zazi to be released on time served

A Queens man caught preparing for a 9/11 anniversary suicide bomb attack on the subways under Grand Central will soon walk out of prison thanks to a sentence that amounts to his time already served, a judge ruled Thursday.

Najibullah Zazi, 33, had faced up to life in prison after his 2009 arrest, but spent nearly the next 10 years cooperating against al Qaeda.

Thursday’s 10-year sentence — which, given his good behavior behind bars, means he will be sprung any day now — came at the urging of prosecutors, who cited his extensive cooperation in arguing that he deserved a break.

Brooklyn federal Judge Raymond Dearie agreed, letting Zazi off with little more than a tongue-lashing as he noted that the one-time jihadist had come to the US in 1999 as a 14-year-old refugee from Pakistan.





“You came with hard-working and honorable people,” the judge scolded. “We welcomed you. But you turned on us.

“Just before I took the bench, I looked over at where the World Trade Center once was, and the reaction I had was the same as when I first met you — how could this have happened,” the judge said.

Sources with knowledge of the case told The Post that as a cooperating terror informant, his release will be cloaked in secrecy, and he’ll spend the rest of his life living under federal protection.

Zazi will be at least the third admitted New York City-based terrorist in the past year to be sentenced to zero or very little additional prison time in exchange for his cooperation.

The others are Bryant Neal Vinas, 34, who had served just eight years when he was cut loose last May, and Zazi’s pal and co-conspirator, Zarein Ahmedzay, who had also faced life in prison but was freed in December after a decade of cooperation.





Like Vinas, who implicated Zazi, and Ahmedzay, whom Zazi in turn implicated, Zazi “gave the government his full, complete cooperation,” the feds had written in court papers.

“Zazi’s cooperation has continued through the present,” the feds wrote.

in a pre-sentencing document that included three pages of redacted descriptions of his ongoing anti-terror assistance.

In all, Zazi met with the government more than 100 times to assist in multiple investigations. Zazi also testified against one of his co-conspirators, Adis Medunjanin, in April 2012, and a second terrorist, would-be British bomber Abid Naseer, in March 2015.

According to court papers, Zazi was born in Afghanistan, grew up in Pakistan and moved with his family to Queens when he was 14.

He dropped out of Flushing High School before his senior year, and held jobs at a grocery store, a fast food restaurant and operated a coffee cart in downtown Manhattan.





Three years after he dropped out of school, he started joining his Queens-based pals, Ahmedzay and Medunjanin, in listening to hundreds of hours of lectures by radical jihadists.

By 2008, “Zazi believed that America was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, and was using 9/11 as a pretext to occupy Afghanistan,” the feds wrote in court papers.

“Zazi believed that he had a personal duty to go and fight against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.”

He traveled with two friends — one an Afghan native, one a Pakistani — to Pakistan in hopes of being trained to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

The three joined al Qaeda, attending training in a compound in South Waziristan, where they learned how to use AK-47s, handguns, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades — and where Zazi learned how to make and detonate bombs and suicide jackets.





In August 2009, Zazi, Ahmedzay and Medunjanin plotted in New York to make suicide vests and blow themselves up during rush hour at Grand Central. The three had begun gathering bomb-making materials, but the plot was thwarted by law enforcement, which had already had the trio under surveillance.

“I tried my best to correct my horrific mistake by cooperating with the government,” Zazi told the judge in asking for forgiveness — and leniency.

“I am not the same person,” he said. “I have a deeper knowledge of myself, and understanding of the true meaning of Islam and almost find it hard to imagine what I was involved with in 2009 and 2008.”

Zazi’s assistance “has been incredibly valuable to the US and to our foreign partners,” assistant US attorney Doug Pravda told the judge.

“In the government’s view, this assistance is far beyond substantive,” he said.

Zazi has also repudiated all terror ideology, his lawyer, William Stampur, told the judge.

“He has unequivocally disavowed radical Islam in no uncertain terms,” Stampur said.

As a condition of his release, Zazi will be subjected to a lifetime of supervised release by officials with the U.S. Department of Probation, the judge ruled. He’ll also have access to mental health treatment, should he need it, Pravda said.

Additionally, Zazi will be required to cooperate with agents and prosecutors indefinitely, whenever his services are required.

“There’s always a chance that they might do something,” one law enforcement source worried of the three freed former jihadists.

“But I’m sure they’ll keep a watch on them — and I’m sure they know they’re being watched.”

Queens councilman Robert Holden was less optimistic. “He would have killed hundreds if not thousands of Americans,” he said of Zazi. “He swung from being extremist enough to execute a suicide bombing to giving up his accomplices … what’s stoping him from going back to extremism?”

Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Julia Marsh and Laura Italiano





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