NEW YORK Ten days after his arrest, Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed New Yorks Time Square bombing, has not been presented before a court, prompting some US media men to ask the question: Where is Shahzad? Federal authorities say Shahzad, the 30-year-old US citizen of Pakistani descent, voluntarily waived his right to an initial court appearance and agreed to answer questions, possibly without a lawyer and while in custody at an undisclosed location. US law allows him the right to talk without presenting himself before a court. But it is also uncommon for a suspect without a formal plea deal with prosecutors. You usually dont see a defendant cooperate this quickly, because his cooperation is really his only bargaining chip, Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, was quoted as saying in media reports. Authorities will continue to question him for as long as it takes to get important and time-sensitive information, Mintz added. But they wont interrogate him indefinitely, even with his cooperation. At some point, its in the governments interest to get him counsel and have him appeared before a judge to ensure his waiver was done knowingly. Civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby, who has represented several terrorism case defendants over the last two decades, called him a magic jihadist. First you see him and then he disappears into some Manhattan version of Guantanamo, but with worse weather and better coffee, he was quoted as saying. Kuby said the questioning of Shahzad was solely to gain intelligence because the evidence was so strong against him before he was caught. He said Shahzad was probably not thinking about trying to win leniency at sentencing. Defendants normally are brought to court within a day or two of their arrest to formally face charges, and that was the expectation with Shahzad. A middle-of-the-night statement by prosecutors announcing the arrest said he would appear later the following day. But with the federal courthouse crowded with reporters and surrounded by news cameras on May 4, word came that the appearance had been indefinitely postponed because of his continued cooperation. Since then, the US Attorneys office in Manhattan and FBI have steadfastly refused to discuss Shahzads whereabouts or conditions of confinement. His name is absent from a US Bureau of Prisons online database. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler declined to say where Shahzad is being held. Shahzad would have had to sign a written waiver and keep reiterating that he was sticking to it in order for his cooperation to continue, said William Devaney, another former federal prosecutor. Thats something he could do on his own. But enough time has passed that prosecutors would probably want to play it safe and make sure he has counsel, Devaney said. A criminal complaint made public last week gave some clues about Shahzads cooperation: It said he had admitted receiving bomb-making training in the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan, where both al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban operate. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed Sunday that investigators had evidence that the Pakistani Taliban helped facilitate and finance Shahzad, saying: They were intimately involved in this plot. Clearly now our understanding is that the TTP had a major role in this incident, US counterterrorism adviser John O Brennan said on CBSs Face the Nation. Ken Wainstein, a former US attorney in Washington who headed the Justice Departments anti-terrorism efforts and served as homeland security adviser under President George W Bush, said cooperation does not always mean a defendant is trying to win leniency. Sometimes, he said, a defendants cooperation is motivated by just sheer pride in what hes done, a desire to lay out or even boast about the crimes he committed. Some terror suspects since 9/11 have been happy to talk about the terrorist acts theyve committed, he said. Cooperation does not always lead to leniency, he said. He cited the case of a suspect in a triple murder case who waived his rights and spent several days giving a series of post-arrest confessions, only to be charged with a death-penalty case and ultimately receive a sentence of life in prison without parole. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, following a close door intelligence briefing on the failed Times Square bomb attempt told reporters that the likelihood of a Pakistani Taliban connection was very high in the case, and made a strong pitch for designating the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as a terror outfit. But the Republicans on the committee said there was no evidence to link Shahzad with the Taliban.