RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, Host:
Hi, Dina.
DINA TEMPLE: Good morning.
LOUISE KELLY: OK. So start off, just remind us what the details were of the New York City plot last fall.
TEMPLE: Now, he was arrested back in September of last year, and he's pleaded guilty to all the charges in this case. And when he was arrested, Attorney General Eric Holder said this was the most serious plot against the United States since 9/11.
LOUISE KELLY: And now with this new indictment, the plot would seem to be even more serious than U.S. officials had thought.
TEMPLE: Apparently, just before Zazi left Denver for New York to launch the attacks, he sent an email to this al-Qaida contact saying the marriage is ready. And that code, apparently, was the same kind of code that they used in the U.K.
LOUISE KELLY: And we hear a lot about lone wolf terrorists these days - people radicalized on their own. That's not the case here. I mean, I understand they're tracing a connection all the way back to al-Qaida's senior leadership on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
TEMPLE: He actually lived here for 15 years. He had a childhood in Brooklyn in the 1980s and early '90s. He went to community college in Florida. His father was actually in charge of a mosque there. He speaks English really well. And that's one of the reasons that my sources say that they think he's been made, you know, in charge of external operations for al-Qaida, because he can move around quite easily. He almost looks like he's South Asian or Hispanic. And now there's a $5 million bounty on his head.
LOUISE KELLY: Meanwhile, there were some new arrests overnight in Norway. Are they connected to all this?
TEMPLE: We think so. Sources tell me that these Norway arrests - there were three arrests. I think there were two in Oslo and one in Germany. And it's unclear whether these were related to that U.K. plot that we were just talking about in Manchester, or whether there was a separate plot in Norway to do something there. It's a little too sketchy now. But we know that this has to do with the unsealing of this - superseding indictment yesterday.
LOUISE KELLY: Dina, another story you've been following. I want to change gears just quickly. This is the case of the alleged Russian spies. And we're hearing they may have made some sort of swap with U.S. spies in Russia. What is the latest on that story, quickly?
TEMPLE: Because what we're hearing, is they're going to plead guilty to lesser charges and then actually be deported to Russia. And we're also hearing there's some movement in Russia about getting some people together who might be coming here.
LOUISE KELLY: OK. Thank you, Dina.
TEMPLE: You're very welcome.
LOUISE KELLY: That's NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, updating us there on two stories.
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