Najibullah Zazi, From Smiling Face at Coffee Cart to Terror Suspect
To many, Najibullah Zazi was a familiar face on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan, serving pastries and coffee to the morning rush hour crowd near Wall St. No one could have guessed that this was the same person who would one day be an alleged terror suspect in a plot that would possibly rival 9/11, if carried out.
The NY Times takes a look at the background and life of Najibullah Zazi
For many on Wall Street — young, old, all in a hurry, the charging bulls of Bowling Green — his was the first hello of the day. Affable and rooted, he lived for 10 years in the same apartment with his family in Flushing, Queens. His father drove a cab for more than 15 years.
He was, in other words, no brooding outcast, no sheltered, suggestible loner raised in a closed community.
He was the smiling man who remembered a customer liked his coffee large, light and sweet. He had a “God Bless America” sign on his cart. He was the doughnut man.
But prosecutors say Mr. Zazi, 24, who worked blocks from ground zero, was just as furtive an operative as the Sept. 11 hijackers when he traveled to Pakistan last year for terrorism training and returned to the United States with a plan to build bombs using beauty supplies and backpacks.
