Questions surface over Times Square investigation

(News Today) - Questions remained in the days following the dramatic arrest of the Times Square bombing suspect, who was captured only minutes before his plane was due to take off for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Faisal Shahzad was able to board Emirates Flight 202 late Monday despite being put on a no-fly list earlier in the day, but at the time of his ticket purchase, the airline had not refreshed its information so his name did not raise any red flags, a senior counterterrorism official said.

Authorities had tailed Shahzad throughout the day, but lost him before he arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he was ultimately arrested, the official said.

However, an FBI official responded that surveillance operations are designed with redundancies in place, and that agents had to avoid tipping off Shahzad that he was being followed.

At a Tuesday news conference, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended surveillance efforts.

"I was here all yesterday and through much of last night and was aware of the tracking that was going on, and I was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him," Holder said.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, noted that, along with a Nigerian man who tried to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, this is the second high-profile incident in recent memory where someone on the U.S. no-fly list has managed to board a plane.

"Whatever went wrong, I hope they get their acts together and correct it," Rangel said. "The good thing about this is that nobody was hurt in either case, but ... someone ought to come up with the answer and see that it doesn't happen again."

Shahzad was arrested shortly before midnight Monday at JFK airport after U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which reviews all flight manifests, caught his name when the airline sent the agency its passenger list, according to the counterterrorism official.

The terror plot may dominate discussions Wednesday as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg travels to Washington for a previously scheduled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on terrorism.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine and ranking member of the committee, has already expressed concerns.

"A key question for me is why this suspect was allowed to board the plane in the first place," Collins said, according to the New York Times. "There appears to be a troubling gap between the time they had his name and the time he got on the plane."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that U.S. intelligence efforts have to be better.

"Being lucky can't be our national security strategy," Hoekstra said. "We were lucky on Christmas Day. We were lucky last week."

Source : CNN

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At least 61 dead in Iraq bombings

Baghdad, Iraq (News Terupdate) - A wave of bombings targeting Shiites, a market in Baghdad and a neighborhood in Anbar province killed at least 61 people and wounded more than 100 others Friday, police said.

The strikes conjured memories of the bloodshed that once engulfed both the capital city and the vast province every day.

No one has claimed responsibility for the string of attacks, but authorities believe that such coordinated bombings bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The bombings come days after Iraqi and U.S. officials announced that they had killed the two most wanted al Qaeda leaders in the country. Although the deaths hurt the insurgents, military officials don't discount insurgents' continued ability to carry out attacks.

This week, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad Military Operations Command, boasted about the killings of insurgent leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

He said security forces must capitalize on this "great victory" but cautioned about the possibility of reprisals.

Of the Iraqi-U.S. joint operation Sunday that killed the two leaders, Atta said, "We had information that they were planning attacks that would target churches, Shiite mosques and bridges, and the security forces took precautions and prepared security plans specifically for this."

Former Deputy Minister of Health and Sadrist politician Hakim al-Zamili said he thinks Friday's bombings could be retaliation for the killing of the al Qaeda in Iraq leaders.

"This political and government vacuum led to such bombings and will lead to many disasters for the Iraqi people," he said.

The strikes occur during the delay in the formation of a government, and many observers fear that a political vacuum could portend an increase in violence, such as the sectarian bloodshed that took place in early 2006 while the government was being formed.

Among the string of attacks:

• Two car bombs targeted worshipers in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, killing 39 and wounding 56 people. Also, a car bomb exploded outside one of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's offices there, wounding five people.

The attacks enraged Sadr City residents, who say the government is turning a blind eye to militants. Al-Sadr's office distributed a statement Friday afternoon calling for his followers to show restraint and called for three days of mourning. Al-Sadr has a political movement and a large grass-roots following.

• In southeastern Baghdad, eight people died and 23 were wounded when a car bomb and a roadside bomb detonated outside Muhsin al-Hakim mosque.

• In the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriya, a car bomb explosion outside Hadi al-Chalabi mosque killed five people and wounded 10.

• A roadside bomb outside the Sadreen mosque in the Zafaraniya neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad killed two people and wounded seven.

• One person was killed and six people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in an outdoor market in the southern Baghdad district of Dora.

• A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in the Ameen neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, wounding two people.

• West of Baghdad, in the Anbar province town of Khaldiya, six people were killed and 10 were wounded when six roadside bombs exploded in a residential area where a police officer and a judge lived. Authorities imposed a curfew.

Source : CNN

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