Big Apple is still the big target for terrorists

The failed car bomb in Times Square again underlined how the Big Apple is still the big target for terrorists who see New York as symbol of the country they hate.

Big Apple, City that Never Sleeps: New York lays claim to many titles, but as Mayor Michael Bloomberg says, there’s also the distinction no one wants, terrorism capital.

“These things invariably come back to New York,” Bloomberg said.

“Terrorists around the world who feel threatened by the freedoms that we have always focus on those symbols of freedoms and that is New York City,” he said. For now police say they don’t know who had left the large, if amateurishly constructed car bomb left fizzling in the teeming heart of New York’s theatre district Saturday evening. They are not even saying whether one person or a group was responsible, let alone discussing possible motives.

“We have no idea who did this or why,” Bloomberg said.

But New York has been a prime target for Islamist militants since a 1993 car bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, precursor to the slaughter of September 11, 2001, when hijacked airliners brought the Twin Towers to the ground and killed almost 3,000 people.

Bloomberg, re-elected last year to a third term, took office just after 9/11 and has presided over the response to a seemingly endless stream of would-be attacks.

Although there has not been a significant attack since 9/11, that event and the US war it spawned in Afghanistan loom darkly over the city.

An indication of the nervousness here is the bitter opposition to President Barack Obama’s idea of transferring alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from Guantanamo to New York to stand trial. Businesses and Bloomberg led the protest, saying the trial would again put their city in the cross-hairs. The White House appears to have backed away from the plan.

But what Saturday’s attempted bombing demonstrated is that New York never really stopped being a target. Its museums, shops and world famous landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty, attract millions of tourists. New York is also the US media capital, meaning out-of-proportion TV and press coverage of even minor events such as building-site accidents.

While the Times Square bomber may not have known how to make a working bomb, the perpetrator could easily have predicted the psychological and publicity impact.

Even as police hunt for the suspects in Saturday’s episode, federal courts here are winding up the cases of a gang led by Afghan immigrant and self-confessed Al-Qaeda agent Najibullah Zazi that if successful would have been much more deadly.

Zazi pleaded guilty in February to a plot in which he and others would have set off bombs in the subway system on or around the anniversary of 9/11.

Although Zazi’s motivation was apparently closely linked to the US war in Afghanistan, he and his gang also had close personal ties to New York. So did another group of New Yorkers that was arrested last year and accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue in the city and shoot down military planes at a nearby base.

In that case, amateurism doomed their alleged attempt and the suspects were apparently encouraged all along by a double-agent who is now at the heart of the prosecution case.

Other would-be attackers against New York include four men arrested in 2007 for a plot to bomb JFK airport.

In 2006 a British man linked to Al-Qaeda, Dhiren Barot, was sentenced to life in prison for planning attacks on targets in Britain and the United States, including the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2003, a Kashmiri-born US man, Lyman Faris, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a plan to blow up Brooklyn Bridge.

The Dawn