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Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, whose son is at the center of the terrorism investigation, will be allowed to go home under electronic monitoring and required to remain there except for work, medical care, religious services or inflatable court appearances, prosecutors said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer in Denver, Colorado, set bail at $50,000, but Zazi is unlikely to inflatable bouncer be released until later this week.
Prosecutors are asking that his son, 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi, be held until trial. Shaffer set a detention hearing for the younger Zazi for Thursday.
Investigators said Najibullah Zazi has admitted attending courses and receiving instructions on inflatable castles weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training facility in Pakistan's tribal areas during a 2008 trip and lied to federal agents about explosives-handling instructions they found on his computer.
His attorney, Arthur Folsom, has denied the allegations.
The Zazis and Ahmad Wais Afzali, a 37-year-old Muslim cleric and funeral director from the New York borough of Queens, are the first people charged in connection with what the Justice Department has said was a plot to detonate bombs in the United States.
Earlier Monday, Afzali appeared in a federal court in New York, where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf. He smiled as he listened to the magistrate read the charge against him, blowing kisses to his wife during the hearing.
Ron Kuby, Afzali's lawyer, said his client had tried to help federal agents find Najibullah Zazi and called the charge against his client "a bootstrap case" the government brought "to cover up their own failings and the fact that they were the ones who blew this investigation."
According to affidavits outlining the charges against him, Afzali warned Najibullah Zazi that his phone call was being monitored. But Kuby said Afzali was helping "absolutely frantic" federal agents find Zazi, who had attended his Queens mosque with his family as a teenager.
"My client didn't tip him off, he was already tipped off," Kuby said. "And now the FBI is looking for somebody to blame."
Afzali was ordered to remain in custody until a bond hearing later this week. Kuby said his client had been an occasional source for New York's Joint Terrorism Task Force when it looked into previous terror plots, and a detective who had sought out Afzali as a source in previous cases would testify on the imam's behalf Thursday.