NYC bomb plotter testifies against suspect in U.S. base attack

Zarein Ahmedzay, one of the three men convicted in a 2009 al-Qaida suicide bomb plot to attack New York City’s subways, made his third appearance as a government witness on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court against a man accused of being behind a 2009 attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan.

Ahmedzay, now 32, of Queens, testifying at the trial of Muhanad al Farekh, identified a man he knew as “Yousef” as one of his weapons “trainers” at an al-Qaida encampment in Pakistan in 2008. The man he identified had traveled with Farekh to Pakistan from Canada for jihad in 2007, prosecutors say.

Al Farekh, also 32, a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent, is accused of serving with al-Qaida’s “external operations” contingent until he was captured in 2014. Authorities said his fingerprints were found on tape wrapping the detonator of an undetonated truck bomb used in an attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman near Khost, Afghanistan.

Prosecutors say “Yousef” was Ferid Imam, one of two students from the University of Manitoba who accompanied al Farekh to Pakistan. Imam’s whereabouts and fate are not known.

The link allowed prosecutors to elicit from Ahmedzay a detailed narrative for the jury of his thwarted effort with jihadi associates Najibullah Zazi and Adis Medunjanin to detonate suicide vests on the subways. Al Farekh had nothing to do with that plot.