Faisal Shahzad, 30, a naturalized U.S. citizen, returned from Pakistan in February and told authorities he spent five months there visiting his parents, according to the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York.
After being arrested on Monday night at John F Kennedy International Airport trying to leave the country, he admitted to authorities he had tried to detonate a bomb in Times Square on Saturday night, the documents said.
Accused: Facebook and other social networking website pictures of a man that ABC News identifies as the Faisal Shahzad arrested in connection with the Times Square bomb car bomb attempt
A law enforcement official said that Shahzad had effectively admitted to all the charges.
'He's admitted to buying the truck, putting the devices together, putting them in the truck, leaving the truck there and leaving the scene,' the source told Reuters.
'He's claimed to have acted alone. He did admit to all the charges, so to speak,' the source said, adding that investigators were still looking into his activities during a recent trip to Pakistan.
Shahzad told investigators he acted alone and denied any ties to radical groups in his native Pakistan, the official said.
However investigators are not buying his story.
A U.S. Department of Justice graphic showing the positioning of charges in the Nissan Pathfinder allegedly driven by Shahzad and left in Times Square on Saturday
'Based on our collective experience it's hard to really believe that this is something someone would do on their own. It seems hard to pull off alone. There's a lot we don't know yet,' the source said.
Pakistani police have arrested several people in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb attack, security sources said.
'We have picked up a few family members' related to Faisal Shahzad, a security official in Karachi said. A friend of Shahzad was also arrested.
Shahzad, who received U.S. citizenship last year, was seized while on a flight apparently trying to flee the country.
The Emirates flight taking him out of the U.S. to Dubai was already heading to the runway when FBI agents caught up with it.
In scenes that could come straight from a Hollywood film, as agents raced to Shahzad's home in Connecticut he was already on his way to New York's JFK airport.
Investigation: Police search a home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, this morning. The property is a known home for Faisal Shahzad, the man arrested on suspicion of leaving a car bomb in New York's Times Square
By the time investigators realised he was on the flight, the Dubai-bound jet was already on the way to the runway ready for take off.
But agents called it back to the gate and 30-year-old Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was taken into custody.
'They just caught him at the last second,' a federal law enforcement source said.
WHO IS FAISAL SHAHZAD?
The suspect in the Times Square bombing is believed to be a married father-of-two, a girl and a boy.
Shahzad, 30, became a U.S. citizen in April of last year.
He is believed to have visited Pakistan last year. The BBC has reported that he rented a house in a middle-class neighbourhood in Karachi, while the U.S. media claim he spent five months in Peshawar.
The BBC claimed security sources said that Shahzad's wife and at least one child are still in Karachi.
A neighbour at his former home in Shelton, Connecticut, has apparently told investigators that Shahzad claimed he worked on Wall Street.
The neighbour claimed Shahzad and his family lived in the house for three years.
He left in May of last year, his wife following a month later, she claimed.
'They left a lot of their stuff there,' she said. 'All they really took was a refrigerator.'
The neighbour, Brenda Thurman, told U.S. media that Shahzad was 'a little strange'.
'He didn't like to come out during the day,' she said.
Other neighbours claimed he was friendly.
The airline today revealed that three men were removed from a New York to Dubai flight due to depart yesterday.
It is currently unclear whether the men were on the same flight that Shahzad was trying to board.
'Emirates can confirm that its flight EK 202 was called back by the local authorities prior to departure. Three passengers were removed from the flight,' the airline said in a statement.
'Full security procedures were activated, including the deplaning of all passengers and a thorough screening of the aircraft, passengers, and baggage. Emirates is co-operating with the local authorities.'
Shahzad had recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan, where he had a wife. He is an American citizen with an address in Shelton, Connecticut.
The suspect bought a sports utility vehicle, a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, from a Connecticut man about three weeks ago and paid cash, detectives said.
The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District in Manhattan will handle the case and said Shahzad would appear in court Tuesday on formal charges, but those charges were not made public.
FBI agents searched the home at a known address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the early hours of this morning Tuesday, said agent Kimberly Mertz.
Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house, which is in a mixed-race, working-class neighbourhood of multi-family homes in Connecticut's largest city.
A bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said America 'will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice', suggesting additional suspects are being sought.
The bomb in the vehicle could have produced 'a significant fireball' and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows, police said.
The SUV was parked on a street lined with restaurants and Broadway theatres, and full of people out on a Saturday night.
Members of the media walk around a house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where FBI agents had searched for Shahzad
The mailbox of suspect Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad's former home is seen on Sheridan Street in Bridgeport
The vehicle identification number (VIN) had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the recorded owner.
'The discovery of the VIN on the engine block was pivotal in that it led to the identifying the registered owner,' said Paul Browne, chief New York Police Department spokesman. 'It continues to pay dividends.'
The US attorney's office in Manhattan will handle the case. It was not clear if additional suspects were being sought.
Officials say the SUV's registered owner, whose name has not been released, is not considered a suspect in the bomb scare.
In Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday's attempted bombing was a terrorist act.
The motive remains unclear. The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for the bomb in three videos that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said.
Hero cop: Wayne Rhatigan (right) was the first police officer on the scene. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (left) took him out for a steak dinner last night to personally thank him
New York officials said police have no evidence to support the claims. It is unclear if the suspect in custody has any relationship to the group.
The SUV was parked near offices of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated show South Park that the militant group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the Prophet Mohammed by depicting him in a bear costume.
Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the explosive device, and no one was hurt.
This CCTV footage shows the Nissan Pathfinder, loaded with explosives, being driven into Times Square shortly before it was abandoned
The explosive device had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate the petrol cans and set the propane alight in a chain reaction, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
A metal rifle cabinet placed in the cargo area was packed with fertiliser, but bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertiliser used in previous terrorist bombings.
The exact amount of fertiliser was unknown. Police estimated the cabinet weighed 200lb to 250lb when they pulled it from the vehicle.
Following the attempted bombing on Saturday night, police have focused their efforts on the hundreds of CCTV cameras in the area.
New York police commissioner Ray Kelly said a man in some the footage made public was a 'person of interest'.
NYPD forensics officers load the Nissan Pathfinder on to the back of a truck following the alert in the early hours of Sunday
One of the alarm clocks found as part of a bomb in the sports utility vehicle
CCTV: Police also appealed for a man seen taking off one shirt to reveal a red one underneath to come forward. He is standing next to the Nissan Pathfinder
'He looks around, takes off that shirt, puts it in a bag and continues to walk south, looking a couple of times in a furtive manner,' he said.
'This happened around the time the pops started to go off in the car, so that's why we want to talk to him.'
The CCTV shows the middle-aged man walking into the shot from the top right and pausing in the centre to take off his dark coloured shirt, revealing a red one underneath. He puts that away and quickly walks off.
Police also revealed more details about the car bomb which is being analysed by forensic teams.
A spokesman for the FBI said that once all the forensic information was collected it would be cross-checked with law enforcement agencies around the world, including Scotland Yard, for similarities.
In 2007 a Mercedes packed with an 'Iraqi-style' bomb was parked outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Leicester Square in central London, close to many West End shows.
Like the New York bomb, it was homemade with propane gas and petrol and designed to be set off by timers in a packed public place.
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