Shahzad later told the authorities that he believed that the attack on May 1 would kill at least 40 people, having monitored his target for three months through live video feeds on the Internet, to determine which areas drew the largest crowds and when they would be busiest, the prosecutors said.
Shahzad’s goal was to “maximise the deadly effect of his bomb,” the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, told a judge in a new court filing. Bharara’s office also revealed that Shahzad told the authorities after his arrest on May 3 that he planned to detonate a second bomb in New York City two weeks later, and was prepared to conduct more attacks until he was captured or killed, the document shows.
In the filing, prosecutors asked the judge, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of Federal District Court, to impose a mandatory term of life imprisonment on Shahzad, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday. “The premeditated attempt to kill and maim scores of unsuspecting innocent men, women and children with a homemade bomb can only be described as utterly reprehensible,” the prosecutors said.
It is known that the Pakistani Taliban helped to develop and finance Shahzad’s bombing plot, but the court filing offers new details about how he communicated with them.
It said that in the period leading up to the bombing attempt, Shahzad stayed in regular contact with the Taliban over the Internet, using software programs the Taliban installed on his laptop computer while he was training with them in Pakistan.
He communicated with his Taliban associates about the bomb he was building and the Nissan Pathfinder he had bought, as well as other topics, the government said.
The New York Times