US prosecutors filed terrorism charges Tuesday against Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American accused of planting a car bomb in New York's Times Square. The 10-page criminal complaint accuses Shahzad, 30, of attempting “to use a weapon of mass destruction” to kill people in the crowded center of New York Saturday. He was also slapped with four other charges -- attempting to kill people in the United States through international terrorism, carrying a destructive device, transporting explosives and attempting to destroy a building. The criminal complaint said that Shahzad received training in bomb-making in Pakistan's unruly Waziristan region and that he carried a pre-paid cellular telephone through which he took calls from Pakistan ahead of the plot. Faisal Shahzad was earlier taken into custody by FBI agents and New York Police Department detectives at Kennedy Airport while trying to board a flight to Dubai, according to US Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials. He was identified by customs agents and stopped before boarding, Holder said early Tuesday in Washington. US officials took three people off a New York-Dubai flight moments before it was to take off, Emirates Airlines said Tuesday. “Emirates can confirm that its flight EK 202 (from New York to Dubai on May 3)... was called back by the local authorities prior to departure. Three passengers were removed from the flight,” the airline said in a statement. “Full security procedures were activated, including the deplaning of all passengers and a thorough screening of the aircraft, passengers, and baggage. Emirates is cooperating with the local authorities,” it said. Two detained in Karachi Pakistan detained Tuesday two people linked to Shahzad, and pledged full co-operation with the US investigation. The two detained in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi were connected with suspect Shahzad through telephone records, a top security official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. News reports said Shahzad, 30, lived in Connecticut and had returned to the US recently from a five-month trip to Pakistan, where he visited Peshawar, a known transit point for Al-Qaeda and Taliban recruits near the Afghan border. The two people detained in Karachi were being held “based on the telephone record of the New York accused,” the Pakistani security official said. Investigations were under way to determine whether they were the actual recipients of calls made from the accused's cellphone or whether other people had been using the same numbers, he said. A security official in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and financial capital, confirmed that some people had been “picked up” but said they were not themselves suspects in Saturday's attempted bombing. The official declined to give further details but when asked whether the people were Shahzad's relatives, he said “yes”. The information adviser for Sindh province, in which Karachi falls, stressed however that “no arrests have been made” in the city in connection with Shahzad's detention. “No US government agency has shared any information with Sindh government or Sindh police,” Jameel Soomro said. Pakistani intelligence officials said Shahzad's family were believed to have a home in Pabbi in northern Pakistan and another in Hayatabad, a smart district of Peshawar. They also said his father was a retired air force officer. Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad meanwhile that his country would give full co-operation to the US investigation into the failed New York attack. “When an official request comes for that individual, we will cooperate,” Malik said. FBI agents searched the home at a known address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Connecticut, early Tuesday, said agent Kimberly Mertz. Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house overnight in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of multi-family homes in Connecticut's largest city. A bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street. Brenda Thurman, 37, a former neighbor in Shelton, said he lived there with his wife and two small children until last year. Shahzad had told Thurman's husband that he worked on Wall Street, she said.
