7 OCT 2026Times Square Car Bomb Attempt
Introduction
On the evening of 1 May 2010, Faisal Shahzad parked a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder near 45th Street and Seventh Avenue, in Times Square, and tried to set off what was inside it.
The devices did not detonate. A street vendor saw smoke coming from the vehicle and called the police, and the square was cleared. Shahzad walked away, pausing to listen for a blast that never came.
He was 31, born in Pakistan and a naturalised United States citizen. Two days later, on 3 May, Customs and Border Protection officers took him off a Dubai-bound flight at JFK.
Government Response
The plea and the sentence
On 21 June 2010 Shahzad pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to all ten counts of an indictment that carried a mandatory life term. On 5 October 2010 Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum imposed that term.
United States Attorney Preet Bharara called him a remorseless terrorist who had betrayed his adopted country. The FBI said he had built a mobile weapon of mass destruction, intended to kill large numbers of people, and planned to do it again two weeks later. In court Shahzad called himself a Muslim soldier, said Muslims do not abide by human laws, and told Americans to brace themselves.
He told investigators he had taken five days of explosives training in North Waziristan in late 2009 and early 2010 with militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban, and that they had given him more than $15,000. He had become a United States citizen months before that training.
Pakistan
Four men charged in Pakistan with helping him were acquitted in June 2012.
Summary
A naturalised American parked a car bomb in Times Square on a Saturday night, but it did not go off. A vendor called the police, and two days later the man was taken off a plane. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, saying the war with the Muslims had just begun. The judge said the public had to be protected from him and from anyone who would follow him.
The FBI sentencing release is a public document, and the plea is on the court record.
You be the judge.
