Queens terror suspect Najibullah Zazi will face additional terror charges, federal prosecutors said in court today .
"I think it's likely there will be additional charges," assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Knox said at court hearing for Zazi today. "We are still evaluating evidence. My expectation is that we will be seeking a superceding indictment."
Officials are not yet saying what the new charges will be.
Zazi sat silently in court dressed in a blue prison shirt. He was not handcuffed inside the courtroom.
Defense attorney Michael Dowling said he did would not know what the additional charges were until prosecutors announced it in court.
At least four prosecutors took part in the hearing. With a large amount of classified materials and other documents expected to be turned over in the months ahead, outside court Dowling said he might have to expand the defense team.
Judge Raymond Dearie set the next hearing for February 16. He said the trial would not start until the fall at the earliest.
Zazi was arrested in September on charges of plotting to explode a bomb in the US. The FBI said he traveled to a terror training camp in Pakistan to learn how to build explosives. Video from Denver showed Zazi buying hair products that investigators said could be used as ingredients in a bomb. The FBI said the investigation is ongoing but no one else has been charged directly in the alleged plot.
An Afghanistan-born immigrant and former resident of Queens, was previously charged with lying to the government during a criminal investigation. Zazi had been buying chemicals used to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the explosive used in the 2005 London train bombings and by foiled shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001, according to a government detention motion.
On Sept. 6 and 7, just days before arriving in New York City, he checked into the same hotel room where FBI tests later found acetone residue in the vent above the hotel room's stove, according to the detention memo.
On those days, he had urgent communications with another person "seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives," the document said.
He had also searched on the Internet for home improvement stores in Flushing that sold a third component of TATP -- muriactic acid, prosecutors said.
