update on World's Dumbest Terrorist Bomb Case
A Long Island man was arrested on Wednesday and charged with running an illegal business that helped fund the attempted Times Square bombing earlier this year.Mohammad Younis, 44 years old, was accused of passing on thousands of dollars to Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty to the attempt to bomb Times Square in May. Mr. Younis allegedly passed on the money through an unlicensed money-transfer business known as hawala, according to an indictment unsealed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Prosecutors said they had no indication Mr. Younis knew the money would be involved in the attempted bombing. Mr. Younis is also accused of transferring tens of thousands of dollars to other customers of his business.Mr. Younis is expected to be arraigned in federal court in Manhattan Wednesday. His lawyer could not be immediately identified.Hawalas are an informal system of making international money transfers without the use of banks, often to escape government detection. Younis is accused of meeting with Mr. Shahzad in Long Island on April 10, less than a month before the attempted car bombing, to give him the money. Prosecutors said Mr. Shahzad told them that the transfer was arranged by associates of Tehrik-e-Taliban, a militant group in Pakistan that trained him in the use of explosive devices. "By engaging in the alleged conduct, Mohammad Younis unwittingly funded a terror plot that, if successful, would have caused mass casualties in New York City. These charges remind us how international terrorists use the cover of informal money transfer systems to avoid detection and to inflict catastrophic harm," Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement.The two-count indictment against Mr. Younis accuses him of participating in a conspiracy to run an unlicensed money-transmittal business from January to May of this year. On the day of the bombing attempt, Mr. Shahzad parked a Nissan Pathfinder he had recently purchased near 45th Street and 7th Avenue, and walked away to listen for an explosion. When he did not hear one, he took a train back to Connecticut. Inside the car, police found several bags of fertilizer, two red five-gallon gasoline canisters, 152 M-88 fireworks, three propane canisters and two alarm clocks connected to wires. Mr. Shahzad, of Shelton, Conn., pleaded guilty in June in federal court in Manhattan to a 10-count indictment that included charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempting an act of terrorism and transportation of an explosive. Wall Street Journal
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