A Pakistani-born US citizen who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. Faisal Shahzad, 31, pleaded guilty in June to a failed May 1 bombing in Midtown Manhattan. He said he received bomb-making training from the Pakistani Taliban Group, called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and that the group had funded the bomb plot. The son of a retired Pakistani air force marshal, Shahzad grew up mostly in a secular upper-middle-class neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. He first came to the United States as a teenager in 1998 to study and, over the years, attained some of the trappings of what many in the United States consider a successful life two university degrees, a wife and two small children, a house in the suburbs, a job as a junior financial analyst, credit cards and an SUV.Over the years, American military presence in Muslim countries, the plight of Palestinians and perceived insults by Westerners toward Islam apparently began weighing on Shahzad and he was becoming more extreme, according to published reports.
