The admitted mastermind of a fiendish plot to bomb New York’s subways today said he felt he’d been “brainwashed” by his al Qaeda handlers — and dramatically wept on the witness stand as he admitted “I love” the co-conspirator he was now testifying against.
“Do you believe al Qaeda brainwashed you?” asked defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb in Brooklyn federal court.
“Yes, I’d say that,” answered Najibullah Zazi, the 26-year-old Queens man who has confessed to orchestrating the scheme to bomb the subway system in 2009.
Gottlieb asked, “Do you believe al Qaeda brainwashed other people?”
“Yes,” Zazi replied.
Zazi, who is of Afghani descent, was testifying against Gottlieb’s client, 28-year-old Bosnian native Adis Medunjanin, who is accused of conspiring with Zazi and another classmate from Flushing HS in Queens, Zarein Ahmedzay, in the bomb plot, which ultimately was thwarted by authorities.
Both Zazi and Ahmedzay had admitted that they and Medunjnain became radicalized and planned to join insurgent Taliban forces fighting in Afghanistan because of their growing anger over the treatment of their fellow Muslims at the hands of US forces in the war on terror.
The trio traveled to Pakistan with the intention of crossing into Afghanistan, but were prevented from doing so by a military or police checkpoint in August 2008.
The two cooperators have testified that they then met an al Qaeda operative, who directed them to a terror training camp in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. There, they received instruction in firearms handling and discussed potentially bombing targets in Manhattan including Times Square, the New York Stock Exchange, the subways under Grand Central Terminal and movie theaters.
During their training, Zazi previously testified, simmering tension between him and Medunjanin led to a fistfight between the two. Zazi had criticized his friend’s manner of eating and drinking, which conflicted with local Pashtun customs.
Under questioning by assistant US attorney Robert Bitkower, Zazi said that he and Medunjanin stopped speaking to each other for two days at the training camp because of the fight. But they later patched things up, and remained friends, he said.
“Do you still consider him to be a friend?” Bitkower asked Zazi.
Zazi did not immediately answer.
“I love him,” Zazi then said, as his face reddened and he began crying.
He wept for more than a full minute, wiping away his tears with a tissue, as people in the courtroom remained silent.
Medunjnanin gave no visible reaction to Zazi’s admission of love.
In cross-examination, Medunjanin’s lawyer Gottlieb asked Zazi, if he was angry with al Qaeda.
“I’m angry with [al Qaeda’s] way of strategy,” Zazi said in an apparent reference to that terror network’s schemes to target innocent civilians in the United States, like the bombing plot he set in motion in 2009.
“You blame al Qaeda for your miserable life?” Gottlieb continued
“I don’t consider myself to be miserable,” Zazi replied.
But he added that he blames al Qaeda for “my problems” — which include facing a long prison sentence.
“It’s because of that strategy,” he said