FBI to question terror suspect again Thursday

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DENVER - 9Wants to Know has learned FBI agents in Denver will once again question the man at the center of a terror plot investigation on Thursday.
- Colorado Muslims shocked by FBI terror probe

Wednesday, the FBI evacuated two apartment buildings "for safety reasons" as they searched the home of terror suspect Najibullah Zazi. They also raided another home not far away that belongs to members of Zazi's family.

All this was happening as Zazi, 24, was meeting with FBI agents at Denver's FBI headquarters.

The meeting started around 2 p.m. Wednesday. The search warrant of his home at an apartment complex in Arapahoe County was executed by the FBI and the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office around the same time.

9Wants to Know has learned he agreed to give investigators, fingerprints, DNA and handwriting samples. Zazi spent more than eight hours with the FBI Wednesday.

"There were a significant number of questions about individauls in New York, what his relationship is with each of them, how long he's known them and where he met them. We spent time talking about what went on while in New York and what he saw, who he talked to, times, dates and places, his reason for going there," Zazi's attorney, Arthur Folsom, told 9Wants to Know Wednesday night.

Tuesday, Zazi told 9Wants to Know in his first interview with the media that he's not a terrorist and the FBI has the wrong man.

Zazi's name surfaced after federal sources told WNBC-TV in New York agents had been monitoring the Arapahoe County man after he drove a rental car to New York.

Federal officials stepped up their investigation after Zazi rented the car Sept. 9 in Colorado and drove to New York. He told the Denver Post he was traveling there to deal with an issue over a coffee cart that his family owns in Manhattan. While he was in New York, police stopped him on a bridge leading into the city and searched the rental car and his laptop computer. Police later towed his car, and Zazi said he suspected he was being watched.

FBI agents executed search warrants at an apartment in Queens, New York on Monday as part of the investigation. NBC News has learned they seized nine backpacks in the raid.

Zazi flew back to Colorado and learned about the raids in Queens after friends called him.

Zazi told 9Wants to Know he went to New York recently to visit friends. Zazi says anyone who thinks he's done something illegal is wrong.

Zazi is scheduled to meet with agents again at 2 p.m. Thursday.
Zazi lives in the Vistas at Saddle Rock near East Smoky Hill Road and South Versailles.

Around 3:15 p.m., the FBI started to evacuate the apartment buildings. Three people, two women and one man, were taken out of Zazi's apartment. They were not handcuffed. The two women were in traditional Muslim dress. The three left in a government vehicle with FBI agents.

There was about a 100-yard perimeter around the apartment building where Zazi's unit is located. The perimeter expanded multiple times, but the evacuations were lifted by around 4:30 p.m.

"I was doing a facial and I was just cleaning my apartment and relaxing and suddenly there was this hard knocking at the door. And the FBI Agent was like, 'I need you to get outside right now,'" Alesia Strichauchuk, an evacuated resident, said.

She still had the cream on her face from the facial and says she was watching "Dirty Dancing" in her underwear when investigators told her to get out of her apartment.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office also asked that both Canyon Creek Elementary School and Thunder Ridge Middle School to delay dismissal on Wednesday because of the FBI search. Parents were asked to come to the school to pick up their children.

FBI investigators in protective suits were in Zazi's apartment along with dogs during the search.

At the apartment complex, there was a red van with New York license plates that traces back to Mohammed Zazi, who is Najibullah Zazi's father.

As of 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, FBI agents appeared to be scaling down their operations at the apartment. It was unclear if they would still be on scene on Thursday.

The FBI also served a search warrant at a house on East Ontario Drive not far from South Tallyns Reach Parkway on Wednesday afternoon.

No evacuations were ordered there. FBI agents in protective suits were on scene. Neighbors say they saw investigators taking items out of the home and dusting things inside the home.

According to the Post, the home belongs to Zazi's aunt and uncle, Naquib Jaji.

At Jaji's house, according to the Post, neighbors gathered in front of the home as authorities worked beneath a fly tent wrapped in blue tarps. Eight children were put in a red van and led away.

Jaji said Tuesday that Zazi lived at the house briefly before moving to the apartment on Smoky Hill Road.

Neighbor Barbie Christenson told the Post there were always a lot of people in the house on Ontario but that they kept to themselves.

"They wouldn't make eye contact with you," she said.

The Post reports she noticed many cars at the house, saying it appeared they held meetings there on a regular basis.

In the past week, Christenson told the Post she noticed a man with a mustache and sunglasses parked in a dark sedan on the street watching the house.

According to NBC News, federal officials have had Zazi under surveillance for quite some time.

NBC News reports that authorities found documents in Zazi's rented car that contained explosive formulas. Investigators in Colorado are now checking to see whether he recently bought any ingredients.

No charges have been filed.

Folsom told 9Wants to Know he contacted the FBI Wednesday morning in order to set up a meeting.

"We reached out to FBI this morning and would like to clear the air and they got back to us and said they'd like to sit down," Folsom said before the meeting.

The meeting comes as more resources are being brought to New York City to support a terror plot investigation there, according to CNN.

The FBI is leading the investigation but will not comment.

Zazi has not been arrested. Three others interviewed during the raids in Queens on Monday in several residences as part of the terrorist investigation were not arrested either.

Zazi flew back to Denver on Sunday. He works at ABC Shuttle in Aurora. It operates at Denver International Airport.

"He's a very intelligent, articulate, well-spoken man. He's a young man and I think he's a little bit concerned and that's understandable given that he's a person of Middle Eastern descent and given that occurred around the Sept. 11th attacks and in the month of Ramadan," Folsom said. "I think he's concerned more than anything that people are going to get the wrong idea that simply because he is a Muslim follower that he is involved or somehow associated with people who do these kinds of horrible activities."

Recently, the FBI and Homeland Security asked local police departments nationwide, including Denver, to be on the lookout for materials that could be used to make explosives and for people with burn marks on their hands, faces or arms, according to WNBC-TV.

Bruce Finley, Tom McGhee and Kevin Vaughan of the Denver Post contributed to this story.