Report: Shahzad received bomb training

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 6 (UPI) -- The suspect in the failed New York bomb attack received explosives training in Pakistan at a Taliban camp for suicide bombers, The Times of London reported.

Quoting senior Pakistani officials in Peshawar, The Times reported Thursday Faisal Shahzad, 30, received the training during his last trip to Pakistan at a camp run by Qari Hussain, a reputed trainer of suicide bombers.

Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, was arrested Monday by New York authorities just prior to the takeoff of a flight to Dubai.

Other reports have said interrogation of Shahzad indicates the involvement of the Pakistani Taliban in the failed bomb attack last Saturday in New York's Times Square.

Shahzad is married with two children and is the son of a retired senior Pakistani air force officer. He lived in Connecticut and had worked as a financial analyst. His wife is reportedly the daughter on an oil company executive.

On Feb. 3, Shahzad returned from Pakistan after months in Waziristan, the report said.

The Times, quoting sources, reported Shahzad was taken to Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region by a leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, an al-Qaida linked group blamed for a number of attacks in Pakistani cities.

The Times report said in the United States, Shahzad was a competent worker and in his visa application he cleared the FBI's security checks with "no derogatory information."

The report said it was not clear where in Pakistan he was born. Pakistani officials say it was in Nowshera in the northwest province but Karachi was listed in a university application found in a trash can outside his abandoned home in Connecticut.

At a village outside Peshawar, friends and family expressed surprise over his arrest, the Times reported.

"He came from a respectable family and was not even a religious person," one resident said.

Another villager called the United States an enemy and said: "It wants to defame us. The arrest of Faisal is meant to malign a respected family and Pakistan."