Law enforcement disrupted eleven plots against NYC since 9/11

Najibullah Zazi, arrested in New York in a plot to attack the New York transit system // Source: usatoday.com

Police and intelligence services have disrupted eleven plots against New York City since the 9/11 attacks destroyed the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, New York police commissioner Ray Kelly said last week. Reuters offers a list of these plots:

• 2003 — Five Bahraini men were arrested on the border between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. An investigation uncovered a plan on a computer to detonate an explosive device on the New York City subway system that would emit poisonous gas. The device was called the “mubtakkar.”
• 2003 — Iyman Faris, a truck driver from Columbus, Ohio, was arrested after communicating with al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris was convicted of conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda and is serving a 20-year prison term.
• 2004 — A group of men led by Dhiren Barot, a senior al Qaeda operative, was arrested in Britain for planning to attack targets in Britain and the United States. Barot admitted to a plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and carry out attacks in Britain with gas-filled limousines and a “dirty bomb” and was jailed in November 2006 for a minimum of thirty years. Seven other Britons linked to the plot were jailed for a total of 136 years in June 2007.
• 2004 — A Pakistani immigrant was arrested for planning to bomb New York City’s Herald Square subway station. Shahawar Matin Siraj was sentenced in 2007 to 30 years in prison.
• 2006 — Lebanese man Assem Hammoud was arrested in Beirut, accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on trains running through tunnels under the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey.
• 2006 — British police uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners bound for North America using bombs made from liquid explosives.
• 2007 — Four people were charged with planning to blow up New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. They are accused of plotting to blow up the airport’s jet fuel tanks and part of the 40-mile (64-km) pipeline feeding them from New Jersey. The men — Russell de Freitas, Kareem Ibrahim, Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur — are due to stand trial shortly.
• 2008 — U.S. authorities warned of a possible al Qaeda threat to transit systems in and around New York City over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, one of the busiest U.S. travel periods of the year. Authorities said al Qaeda may have discussed such attacks in September 2008.
• 2009 — Four men were arrested and charged over a plot to blow up two New York synagogues and shoot down military planes with stinger missiles. The men — James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Haitian citizen Laguerre Payen — are yet to stand trial.
• 2009 — Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi was arrested and charged with plotting a suicide bombing campaign on Manhattan’s subway system. U.S. authorities disrupted that plot before Zazi and his accused accomplices were able to carry it out. Zazi and another Afghan-born man pleaded guilty in 2010.
• 2010 — Pakistani-born U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad was arrested and pleaded guilty to attempting to set off a car bomb in New York’s Times Square.