Three Pakistani men taken into custody during a series of raids across the Northeast as part of the investigation into the failed Times Square car bombing may have provided money to the man who has admitted carrying out the unsuccessful attack, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday. Senior Obama administration officials have blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the May 1 attempted bombing and said the group was responsible for planning and financing the botched attack, in which an SUV was loaded with explosives and parked in Times Square. Two of the men taken into custody in the early morning raids were picked up after one of two searches in the Boston area, part of a sweep in which Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and local police officers executed six search warrants there, in New Jersey and on Long Island. Two of the individuals were taken into custody in the Boston area and the third in Maine, officials said; they were all arrested on immigration violations. The raids were "the product of evidence gathered in the investigation" and "do not relate to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot against the United States,'' said Special Agent Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Boston field office. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested at least two of the three people in a raid in Watertown, a suburb about 10 miles west of Boston, law enforcement officials said.
– Details are filling in on the half-dozen federal raids across the Northeast today in connection with the Times Square bombing case. Three people were taken into custody—two near Boston and one in Maine—on suspicion of providing money to Faisal Shahzad, reports the Washington Post. They're being held on immigration violations. Other raids were conducted on Long Island and in New Jersey. Authorities say the raids aren't a "big break," reports the New York Times, but rather an attempt to follow up on leads and figure out who provided the means for the attempted car bombing. The US has previously linked Shahzad to the Pakistani Taliban. Those detained "may have provided money to Shahzad but may not have known what they were doing," said a federal law enforcement official. "The question is, did they provide money, did they facilitate and were they knowing?"