SCARY

The High-Stakes Race to Catch the Subway Bomber

Terror analyst delves into court documents.

Adis Medunjanin, 28, was convicted Tuesday of conspiring to bomb the New York City subways, and he was eventually nabbed in a high-stakes chase that lasted only a few days. According to court documents, an associate of Medunjanin named Najibullah Zazi, 24—they pledged allegiance to al Qaeda at the same New York City mosque—first tipped authorities off to a possible plot in September 2009 when he emailed an alleged handler for al Qaeda from a computer in Denver. Zazi left Denver on Sept. 8, driving cross-country to New York, with U.S. national-security agents on his trail. Port Authority agents stopped Zazi, but let him go—but he panicked anyway, telling Medunjanin “we are done.” Zazi was arrested shortly after arriving in Denver, and the FBI arrested Medunjanin and another former classmate of theirs, Zarein Ahmedzay, in January 2010.