US govt: Other targets eyed before NYC subway plot

Zarein Ahmedzay told a Brooklyn jury that he and two former high school classmates — Najibullah Zazi and Adis Medunjanin — also considered striking Penn Station or city movie theaters before settling on attacking Manhattan subway lines as suicide bombers.

Ahmedzay also recounted a meeting at an al-Qaida hideout in Pakistan, where the three agreed to become martyrs. Terror operatives encouraged the men to complete the mission before the end of George W. Bush's second term as president, he said.

"I told them we have come here to give our lives," Ahmedzay testified, "and asked them, 'Are we going to accept it?'"

The testimony followed opening statements at the trial of Medunjanin, 27, a Bosnian-born Muslim and naturalized U.S. citizen who has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, providing material support to a terrorist organization and other charges. Zazi and Ahmedzay pleaded guilty and agreed to testify again Medunjanin in a bid for leniency.

Prosecutors alleged that after the three men received terror training, they slipped back into the United States and formed a sleeper cell of would-be suicide bombers that in 2009 nearly pulled off one of the most chilling terror plots since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The men "were prepared to kill themselves and everyone else around them — men, women and children," said Assistant U.S. Attorney James Loonam. "These men came so close — within days of carrying out this attack."

Defense attorney Robert Gottlieb countered by accusing the government of using "inflammatory rhetoric" about al-Qaida and terrorism to prevent jurors "from seeing the truth about this case." The lawyer conceded his client had sought to support the Taliban's struggle against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but denied he ever agreed to kill American civilians for al-Qaida.

"The truth is that Adis Medunjanin is not a terrorist," he said. "Mr. Medunjanin never planned to bomb the New York City subways."