Washington, May 06: Pakistan-born Faisal Shahzad, whose father is a former Pakistani military official, had, at 29, spent over a decade in the US, collecting Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and landing a job with a Connecticut financial marketing company.
On April 17, 2009, he was among 58 people from 32 countries who were administered the oath of American citizenship by a federal magistrate in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Shahzad obtained citizenship through marriage to Colorado-born Huma Mian, who authorities say is now in Pakistan with the couple’s two children.
Around 7 pm Saturday, just after the Nissan Pathfinder SUV bomb that he had allegedly left at New York’s Times Square was discovered, Shahzad rang his landlord from a train to Connecticut. He had lost the keys to his house, he said. On Tuesday, the authorities said the keys had been locked inside the Pathfinder.
The landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, met Shahzad at the door of the two-room apartment in Bridgeport, Conn., which he had rented since February 15. “He looked nervous,” Chomiak said. “But I thought, of course he’s nervous, he just lost his keys.”
In his nearly a dozen years in the US, Shahzad went to school, held steady jobs, bought and sold real estate, kept his immigration status in good order, and betrayed no sign of connections to terrorists in Pakistan. His neighbours said he was quiet, polite, went walking early in the morning in sandals and loose-fitting shirts, and jogged late at night in black athletic shoes.
Like so many others, he had lost a house to foreclosure. A real estate broker who helped him buy the house, in Shelton, Conn., in 2004 remembered that Shahzad did not like President George W. Bush or the Iraq war.
“I didn’t take it for much,” said the broker, Igor Djuric, “because around that time not many people did.”
Shahzad was born in Pakistan in 1979, though there is some confusion over where. Officials in Pakistan said it was in Nowshera, known for its Afghan refugee camps. But on a university application filled out by Shahzad, which was found in garbage outside the Shelton house on Tuesday, he had listed Karachi.
Pakistani officials said Shahzad was a son of Bahar-ul-Haq, who retired as a Vice Air Marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority. A report from Pakistan said Shahzad’s uncle, retired Major General Taj-ul-Haq, served as the Inspector General of the Frontier Corps.
A Pakistani official said Shahzad might have had affiliations with Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant linked to Al Qaeda who was formerly associated with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
But friends said the family was well respected and non-political. “Neither Faisal nor his family has ever had any links with any jihadist or religious organisation,” one friend said. Another said that “the family is in a state of shock,” adding, “They believe that their son has been implicated in a fake case.”
Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official said Shahzad had travelled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the US. He last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as “Kashmiri”.
Shahzad’s generation grew up in a Pakistan where alcohol had been banned and Islam had been forced into schools and communities as a doctrine and a national glue.
“It’s not that they don’t speak English or aren’t skilled,” a Pakistani official said. “But in their hearts and in their minds they reject the West. They can’t see a world where they live together; there’s only one way, one right way.”
According to immigration officials, Shahzad arrived in the US on January 16, 1999. He enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering in 2000, followed by a Master’s in business administration in 2005.
In January 2002, he obtained an H1B visa for three years, with a possible extension. Cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden applied for the visa; the company confirmed he worked in their accounting department at Stamford, Conn., from January 31, 2002 till June 14, 2006.
He then joined financial marketing services company Affinion Group in Norwalk as a junior financial analyst. He resigned in mid-2009, and government officials said he was unemployed and bankrupt by the time of his arrest.
After marrying Huma Mian, Shahzad applied to become a permanent resident in 2004. Mian had just graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a business degree. She lived in dormitories and in family housing, sharing her quarters with a sister or a cousin. Her parents lived in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
In October 2008, Shahzad applied for citizenship. Six months later, shortly after his naturalization ceremony, he faced foreclosure action from Chase Bank. He and his wife had bought a newly built single-family house on Long Hill Avenue in Shelton in 2004 for $273,000, with a $218,400 mortgage, according to court papers.
The couple’s neighbours in Shelton remembered Huma wore long dresses and a shawl covering her hair. They had toys in their garage and a little swimming pool in the back; last summer, friends went over for barbecues. The family had several tag sales last summer, offering knickknacks and kid stuff, “things that you would give to Goodwill,” said Mary Ann Galich, 55, who lives behind the house.
Three months ago, Shahzad signed a one-year lease on the two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport. When Chomiak, the landlord, went looking for him on Monday, he noticed a distributor cap and two small bags of fertilizer in the garage. Shahzad told Chomiak he wanted to grow tomatoes.
—-Agencies