Naturalised American Faisal Shazad recently returned from five month trip to Pakistan

Profile: Faisal Shahzad

Very little is known so far about Faisal Shahzad, who is suspected of involvement in the attempted car bomb attack in New York's Times Square on Saturday.

Aged 30, he was born in Pakistan, and later became an American citizen. He was arrested at New York's John F Kennedy Airport on Monday evening attempting to board a flight to Dubai.

A neighbour at Mr Shahzad's former home in Shelton, Connecticut, told local newspapers that he and his wife had lived at the house for about three years before moving out last year.

Mr Shahzad left around May, and his wife followed about a month later, said the neighbour, Brenda Thurman.

The couple kept mostly to themselves while they lived there, she said. They had two young children, a girl and a boy.

Pakistan trip

Ms Thurman assumed the property had been repossessed after noticing personal items had been left behind and because of the long grass that took over the lawn in the following months.

"They left a lot of their stuff there," she said. "All they really took was a refrigerator."

Ms Thurman said Mr Shahzad got up early every morning to go to work and had told her that he worked on Wall Street.

"I think he caught the train to New York," she said.

Mr Shahzad had recently returned to the US after a trip to Pakistan, the Associated Press reports.

He is said to have spent some five months there, according to US reports.

One report says he spent some time in the frontier city of Peshawar, close to Taliban strongholds.