FACTBOX-FBI outlines bomb plot case against Zazi

Sept 24 (Reuters) - The two-page indictment returned against Najibullah Zazi charges the 24-year-old Afghani under U.S. anti-terrorism laws with conspiring to use "one or more weapons of mass destruction ... against persons and property in the United States."

Other court documents filed in the case outline in greater detail the actions that prosecutors say Zazi took in the furtherance of a plot to carry out a bomb attack.

The following accusations are contained in those documents, including a government memorandum accompanying the indictment and FBI affidavits filed in support of an earlier charge of lying to federal investigators:

* Zazi traveled in August 2008 to Pakistan, where he "received detailed bomb-making instructions." A computer image file containing nine pages of handwritten notes about making and handling explosives was sent to three email accounts Zazi controlled during this trip. Zazi has told FBI investigators that he also "attended courses at an al Qaeda training facility" while in Pakistan.

* The handwritten notes, later transferred to the laptop computer seized from Zazi's rental car in New York, include the formula for the explosive triacetone triperoxide, or "TATP," the same compound used in the 2005 London train bombings and intended for use in the 2001 "shoe bomb" plot by Richard Reid.

* Zazi returned from Pakistan to New York in January of this year, then moved to the Denver area, where he and unnamed associates "purchased unusually large quantities of hydrogen peroxide and acetone products from beauty supply stores" during the months of July, August and September.

* FBI testing for explosives and chemical residues in a hotel suite rented by Zazi on several occasions found traces of acetone in a kitchen stove vent, suggesting that Zazi had used the stove to heat the chemicals in order to concentrate them, as the bomb-making notes instruct.

* On Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi tried to communicate with an unnamed individual, urgently asking "about the correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives." He repeatedly stressed that he "needed the answers right away."

* Zazi conducted Internet searches for locations of a home improvement store in the Queens borough of New York, where he lived before traveling to Pakistan, and searched the store's website for various formulations of another chemical component, muriatic acid, of a TATP bomb.

* The following day, Zazi began his cross-country road trip to New York City, carrying with him in the rented car the laptop containing the bomb-making notes.

He arrived in New York on Sept. 10, and was stopped briefly by law enforcement on the George Washington Bridge, which connects the city to New Jersey. He spent the night at a home in Queens, and the next day spoke by telephone with a Queens-based imam and government informant, who tipped Zazi off that he was under surveillance. Zazi ultimately bought an airline ticket and flew back to Denver on Sept. 12.

* A search of the Queens home where Zazi had spent the night uncovered an electronic scale, presumably used by Zazi to weigh the hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals to determine the proper concentrations as outlined in the bomb-making notes. The scale and batteries found with it bore Zazi's fingerprints. (Reporting by Steve Gorman, editing by Dan Whitcomb and Anthony Boadle)