NEW YORK — Two men linked to an alleged al-Qaida associate accused of a plot to attack New York City with homemade bombs were arrested today after one of the men caused a traffic accident while under surveillance.
The arrests in New York of Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay were part of “an ongoing investigation” by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, according to FBI agent Richard Kolko, who declined to comment further.
No charges had been announced. The pair were expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court this afternoon.
Two law enforcement officials familiar with the case said one of the men was facing possible charges of providing material support to terrorism. The other could be charged with lying to investigators, said the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Ahmedzay and Medunjanin were first publicly linked to the investigation in September, when investigators raided their homes shortly before the arrest of their old Queens high school classmate Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado airport shuttle driver who has pleaded not guilty to supporting terrorism.
The latest arrests came after the FBI went to Medunjanin’s Queens apartment Thursday afternoon with a search warrant and seized his passport. After the search, he apparently became upset and left in his car.
While driving erratically, Medunjanin called 911 and made angry comments referencing Allah, the law enforcement officials said. He got into an accident and was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.
Federal authorities later took Medunjanin into custody for questioning before deciding to arrest him early Friday, the officials said. Agents arrested Ahmedzay at about 3 a.m. while he was driving a cab in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, authorities said.
“He’s not guilty,” Shried Ahmedzay, 22, his brother, said today. “He works hard to support his family.”
The brother said it was obvious that authorities had him under surveillance for months, noting that unmarked cars frequently parked around his apartment building.
Medunjanin’s attorney, Robert C. Gottlieb, has said FBI agents seized computers and cell phones from his client’s apartment last fall but later returned them. He insisted today that Medunjanin had done nothing wrong.
Authorities “intentionally hid him from his lawyer and his family,” Gottlieb said.
Prosecutors said that Zazi had recently traveled to al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, and that “others” accompanied him on the trip to the country.
After receiving instruction on explosives, Zazi bought beauty supplies in a Denver suburb to make peroxide-based bombs, prosecutors said. He tried to mix explosives in a hotel room in early September, then drove to New York to carry out an attack, possibly on the transit system, they said.
Investigators secretly searched his rented vehicle in New York on Sept. 10 and found a laptop computer with bomb-making instructions, authorities said. Aware he was under surveillance, he flew back to Denver on Sept. 12 and was arrested a week later.
Authorities had said they believed other suspects were in on the plot. Two other men, including Zazi’s father, have been charged with lying to the FBI, but no one else had been charged with terrorism.
Medunjanin, who is originally from Bosnia, and Ahmedzay, who was born in Afghanistan, are U.S. citizens. They and Zazi attended Flushing High School in Queens.
Medunjanin also played football at Flushing High and graduated in June from Queens College. Ahmedzay is licensed to drive a taxi in New York City and took the civil service exam to become a firefighter, although his score made him unlikely to get an appointment.
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