NEW YORK - The arrest last week of Najibullah Zazi on charges of plotting to attack New York City adds urgency to the city’s pleas for federal funding to deter nuclear attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York-area lawmakers said yesterday.
“Despite the incredible job the NYPD is doing, our city does remain a prime target for terrorists,’’ Bloomberg said. “That’s a fact. And so we can always use more resources, more technology, and more boots on the ground to keep this city safe.’’
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and US Representative Peter King of Long Island joined the mayor in pressing Congress for $40 million for a program to ring the region with sensors to detect radioactive material.
“With additional funding of $40 million that we’re looking for, we’ll be able to put in permanent, fixed cameras and radiation detection equipment at all the entry points into Manhattan,’’ Kelly said, “and we’ll also be able to establish a regional wireless system that will enable all the partners in this program to get notified immediately if in fact radiation material is discovered.’’
The Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Committee is considering the act that would fund the program.
Lieberman said the arrest of Zazi, an airport shuttle driver in Denver, is “the realization, unfortunately, of our worst nightmares.’’
The officials spoke at the Citigroup Center on Manhattan’s East Side, site of a terrorist plot that was uncovered in 2004.
Federal prosecutors say Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan immigrant, planned to unleash a terrorist attack on New York City on the Sept. 11 anniversary. They said Zazi received explosives training from Al Qaeda in Pakistan and returned to the United States intent on building a bomb.
He was arrested in Denver a week ago, and his lawyer has denied the charges.
A study released yesterday found that the federal government is prosecuting only about one out of four of those charged in connection with terrorism.
People charged with terrorism often go free because the evidence isn’t strong enough to bring them to trial, said the study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University.
Since 2002, the percentage of terrorism cases federal prosecutors declined to pursue has grown from 31 percent to 73 percent, the study found.
Nearly 6,000 of the close to 8,900 cases federal prosecutors referred for prosecution between 2004 and 2008 were closed without action. Of the remaining cases, 2,302 people were convicted and 1,245 went to prison, the study found, with 52 sentenced to 20 years or more.
READER COMMENTS »
View reader comments » Comment on this story »