QUEENS IMAM CONFESSES HE LIED TO FBI AND TIPPED OFF ZAZI
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/local/queens/liar_admits_he_did_tip_off_zazi_gpAXuERGJvBv8LgT7TL0eP
Qns. imam blubbers: I blabbed! By JANON FISHER
Last Updated: 6:06 AM, March 5, 2010
A Queens imam who worked as a community liaison while also serving as an informant for the NYPD ended up failing at both roles when he tipped off two alleged subway-bomb plotters to the fact the feds were investigating them.
The result, Ahmad Wais Afzali predicted yesterday as he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, will be his “death sentence.”
Afzali, who confessed he lied about tipping off admitted plotter Najibullah Zazi, told federal Judge Frederic Block that he had thought he was simply helping out a couple of troubled boys who grew up around his Flushing mosque.
“I had known them when they were boys and did not think they were capable of serious crime,” a tearful Afzali said of Zazi and Zazi’s alleged cohort, Adis Medunjanin.
Afzali, 39, spilled the beans on Sept. 10, 2009, when he called Zazi’s father, Mohammed, who has been similarly charged, and told him the NYPD had been asking questions about his son.
The imam said in his allocution that he also talked to the younger Zazi, telling him, “They came to ask me about your characters.”
Zazi pleaded guilty last month to planning three bomb attacks on Manhattan subways. Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, who were Zazi’s Flushing HS classmates, were also charged in the plot.
“I told him [Najibullah Zazi] that our phone call was being monitored. I told Zazi, ‘Don’t get involved in Afghanistan garbage and Iraq garbage, that’s my advice to you,’ ” Afzali told the judge.
On Sept. 13, FBI agents interrogated Afzali.
“When I was asked whether I had told Zazi about law enforcement being interested in him, I lied and said I did not. My intention was not to protect Zazi, but to protect myself,” he told Block.
Five days later, he repeated the lie to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.
“In doing so, I failed to live up to my obligation to this country, my community, my family and my religion. I am truly sorry,” Afzali said.
Prosecutors reduced the imam’s charge from lying to federal investigators in a terror investigation to simply lying to federal investigators.
Afzali is unlikely to receive any jail time, but he will have to leave the country, possibly to his native Afghanistan.
The prospect terrified the imam.
“I just signed my death sentence,” he said as he left court. “I grew up here. I barely speak my own language.
“Helping the government, this is what I get.”
janon.fisher@nypost.com
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