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The suspects, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, were part of an ongoing FBI task force investigation, Special Agent Richard Kolko said.
FBI agents Thursday night raided the Queens apartment of Medunjanin, who was said to have close ties to Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado airport driver the feds say is the mastermind of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up New York, law enforcement sources said.
Zazi has pleaded not guilty to charges of getting Al Qaeda training to build homemade bombs to attack city targets.
Medunjanin's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said the FBI seized his client's passport on Thursday. Gottlieb said the search warrant indicated the passport was sought as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
There were no immediate details on the charges against the two men, according to Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney.
Medunjanin was being questioned by counterterrorism agents who were trying to get him to cough up information about Zazi and the Al Qaeda cell - the first uncovered in the U.S. after 9/11.
Zazi, 24, an Afghan national was nabbed after sweeping raids on Queens apartment buildings in September. The raids turned up evidence of bomb-making materials, and Zazi was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
Medunjanin, 25, who is believed to have accompanied Zazi to an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 2008, fled in his car Thursday when he came home and saw agents swarming over his apartment, sources said.
He made it as far as Whitestone, Queens, where he crashed on the Whitestone Expressway about 4 p.m.
The circumstances surrounding the wreck were unclear, but sources insisted Medunjanin did not crash because he was speeding away from agents in pursuit.
Medunjanin, was treated for minor injuries and released from New York Hospital Queens in Flushing.
Medunjanin, a graduate of Flushing High School and Queens College, was grilled by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force before his arrest, sources said.
Zazi told FBI agents in September that he had received Al Qaeda training in weapons and explosives on a trip to Pakistan in 2008, though he denied any involvement in a current bomb plot.
Medunjanin traveled to the same terror camp with Zazi in 2008, a law enforcement source confirmed.
Sources confirmed that Medunjanin's passport was seized during the search at his apartment, which was one of four apartments raided last September after Zazi and the bomb plot surfaced.
Blog post: FBI arrests two in New York, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay, in Zazi bomb ... - New York Daily News
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