An American-born al-Qaida recruit trained to become a suicide bomber before he was captured in Pakistan last year, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Bryant Neal Vinas learned how to use a suicide vest, according to the law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Pakistani authorities nabbed the 26-year-old New Yorker last year in the city of Peshawar near the border of Afghanistan. Law enforcement officials have refused to say exactly when, but a person familiar with the case said Vinas was picked up in November. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Vinas was also interviewed this year in New York by prosecutors in Belgium pursuing an anti-terror case involving Malika El Aroud, said an official at the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case. El Aroud is the widow of a man involved in killing anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.