Embassy caterer held in Times Square plot

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The co-owner of a catering company that organized events for the U.S. Embassy is among six men detained by Pakistan for allegedly helping the failed Times Square bombing suspect, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.

In a statement on its website, the U.S. Embassy warned that the catering company was suspected of ties to terrorist groups and said American diplomats had been instructed to stop using the firm.

Like Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American accused in the failed New York bombing, the six Pakistani detainees were all members of their country’s urban elite, including several who were educated in the United States. One was a former army major.

The suspects were part of a loose network motivated by hatred of America and the West, the Pakistani official told the Associated Press.

One of the men often traveled to the tribal areas close to the Afghan border where U.S. officials have said Shahzad received explosives training under the Pakistani Taliban, the official said.

At least two allegedly helped Shahzad with funding, the official and another Pakistani security officer said, although the exact nature of their link to the Times Square bombing suspect was still being investigated.

The co-owner of the Hanif Rajput Catering Service, Salman Ashraf Khan, was recruited because two other suspects “wanted him to help bomb a big gathering of foreigners” whose event his company was catering, the Pakistani intelligence officer said.

In New York, two U.S. law enforcement officials close to the Times Square probe said Friday that Shahzad told U.S. investigators he received financial support from the Pakistani Taliban for the failed bombing. U.S. authorities believe money in the U.S. was channeled through an underground money transfer network known as “hawala.”