Feds say terrorist planned to use beauty supplies to make bombs

NEW YORK — An Afghan immigrant plotted for more than a year to detonate homemade bombs in the United States, had recently bought bomb-making supplies from beauty supply stores and was looking for "urgent" help in the past two weeks to make explosives, an indictment charged Thursday.

Najibullah Zazi — a 24-year-old airport shuttle driver who authorities said received explosives and weapons training from al-Qaida during a trip to Pakistan last year — was charged in New York with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

His arrest in Denver a week ago on charges that he lied to terrorism investigators sparked home and business searches in New York and Denver, as well as a flurry of national warnings of possible bomb attacks on transit, sports and entertainment complexes.

Authorities hadn't determined a time and place of a possible attack, and Attorney General Eric Holder said in Washington, "We believe any imminent threat arising from this case has been disrupted."

Counterterrorism agents have said they feared Zazi and others might have been planning to detonate homemade bombs on New York City commuter trains.

The two-page indictment of Zazi — who appeared in a Denver court on Thursday — offers few details, but a separate document — a government motion seeking to deny bail — lays out evidence gathered by investigators.

The airport shuttle driver began plotting to "use one or more weapons of mass destruction" between Aug. 1, 2008, and September 2009 against the United States, the papers say.

The document says that on Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi tried to communicate with another individual "seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives."

"Each communication," the papers say, was "more urgent than the last."

On those days, Zazi rented a suite at a hotel in his hometown of Aurora, Colo., authorities charge. The room had a kitchen, and subsequent FBI testing for explosives and residue in the suite found the presence of residue in the vent above the stove.

In July and August, Zazi bought unusually large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a solvent commonly found in nail polish remover — from beauty supply stores in the Denver metropolitan area, the document says. He searched the Internet for home improvement stores in Queens before driving a rental car for a two-day trip to the city, the document says.

Zazi has publicly denied any terrorist plotting. But a series of searches in Denver and New York City over the past two weeks — including high-profile raids on Queens apartments that netted backpacks, cell phones and a scale — haven't found any evidence of explosives.