Note, toward the end of this excerpt, the clear implication from the Daily News that authorities are overreacting. An update on this story. “FBI unit set for more anti-terror raids in Queens; Colorado home raided,” by James Gordon Meek, Judith Crosson, Rocco Parascandola, Alison Gendar and Larry Mcshane for the New York Daily News, September 17 (thanks to Benedict):
The elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team is poised to make more anti-terror raids in Queens, sources told the Daily News.
The discovery of cell phones and back packs raised fears that terrorists were planning a Madrid-style subway bombing plot, sources said.
FBI agents with bomb-sniffing dogs Wednesday raided the Colorado apartment of an Afghan national linked to Al Qaeda and a plot to attack the New York City subway system.
Simultaneously, authorities swarmed over a nearby home believed to belong to a relative of Najibullah Zazi, hauling out boxes of evidence.
And Zazi, 25, met with investigators at FBI headquarters in Denver and provided a DNA sample, a fingerprint and writing samples, his lawyer said.
“My client is not involved in any terror plot,” lawyer Arthur Folsom said. “He answered every question they had.”
The searches in Aurora, Colo., came as the NYPD and an elite FBI team poised for additional raids in Queens in a hunt for bomb-making materials, sources told the Daily News.
Earlier Queens raids turned up nine knapsacks and cell phones, raising concerns about bombers detonating simultaneous blasts as they did in the 2004 attack that killed 191 commuters in Spain.
Bombers in the 2005 London subway attack that killed 56 people also used knapsacks. An FBI counterterrorism bulletin issued Monday cited the British terrorist attack.
Two men who lived in one of the Queens apartments raided Sunday night said a tenuous connection to Zazi had become a nightmare.
“They [the NYPD] keep coming back,” Naiz Khan said last night. “They don’t tell us why they’re here. They took my cell phone and a knapsack that was to be a gift to a child and left.”
His roommate Akbari Amanullah, 30, a cabbie, added: “We just wish it would stop.”…