5 U.S. Men Arrested in Pakistan Said to Plan Jihad

5 U.S. Men Arrested in Pakistan Said to Plan Jihad
By JANE PERLEZ, SALMAN MASOOD and WAQAR GILLANI
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: December 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/world/asia/11inquire.html?th&emc=th


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Investigators from the F.B.I. continued Friday to question five Muslim American men who were arrested in Pakistan earlier this week, but it remained unclear whether the men would be deported to the United States, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said.

“It all depends on the investigations, and things will be clear in a day or two,” said the spokesman, Rashid Mazari.

Officials say the men, from the suburbs of Washington, were en route to North Waziristan for training with the Taliban and al Qaeda to fight American troops in Afghanistan. The police arrested them on Wednesday in Sargodha, a major city in Punjab Province that has become a growing center of militancy.

The F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday that it wanted the men returned to the United States. The five have not been charged under Pakistani law and it is not clear what they would be charged with in the United States, American officials said.

The minister of law in Punjab, Rana Sanaullah, said Friday the Pakistani authorities wanted to complete their investigation into the links between Pakistani extremist groups and the Americans before granting extradition.

The young men had told investigators they planned to meet near the border between Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, with a person who would then take them to their destination in the tribal areas where the Taliban and al Qaeda are based, Mr. Sanaullah said.

He added that it was important for the Pakistanis to understand which militant groups the young men were in touch with before letting them return to the United States. A United States consular officer was scheduled to see the men on Friday, an American Embassy spokesman said, and they would be asked if they wanted a lawyer to represent them.

The questioning by the American investigators of the five men, aged from their late teens to mid twenties, started early Friday as each of the men was called separately into a room at the Sargodha police headquarters, a local police official said. The senior Pakistani police officials from the city were killing time outside the headquarters building as the Americans conducted their investigation, the local police official said.

On Friday, the Pakistani police also released photographs taken of the men at the police station. According to the police, three are of Pakistani origin, one is of Ethiopian descent and another is of Eritrean background.

The Pakistani police said all five were American citizens, but the American Embassy official said one of the five did not hold an American passport.

The police said Khalid Farooq, the father of Umer, one of the young men, had been arrested and was also being questioned Friday on the grounds that he knew the young men were wanted by the F.B.I. but had not reported their whereabouts.

Mr. Farooq and his wife, who run a computer business in northern Virginia, were in Sargodha when the young men turned up there after landing in Karachi on Nov. 20, police said. Mr. Farooq immigrated to the United States 20 years ago and is an American citizen, the American embassy said. Whether the men acted on a lark or were recruited as part of a larger militant outfit, the case has renewed concerns that American citizens, some with ethnic ties to Pakistan and other Muslim countries, are increasingly at the center of terrorist plots against the United States and other nations.

The youths, from Virginia, may end up being at least the fourth case prosecuted this year in which Muslim Americans traveled to Pakistan to link up with what remains a sprawling network of militant groups in the country.

Earlier this week, an American citizen of Pakistani background, David Coleman Headley, was charged in Chicago with helping plot the 2008 rampage in Mumbai, India, that killed more than 160 people.

In September, F.B.I. agents and police detectives arrested Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle bus driver and former coffee-cart vendor, who prosecutors say had traveled to Pakistan for explosives training with two friends from New York. In January, Bryant Neal Vinas, a convert to Islam with family roots in South America, pleaded guilty to receiving training from Al Qaeda after traveling to Pakistan in 2008.

The five men in the current group all said on their visa applications that they were going to a wedding in Karachi, and all five gave the same address in Karachi for their stay in Pakistan, a Pakistani official said.

Their militant contact booked them into a hotel in Lahore, the official said. But once they got there, their contact went to ground and they were stranded.

They then went to Sargodha, home to the central command of Pakistan’s air force, and a city known as a center for anti-India militant groups.

The men were arrested at a four-room home in a government housing complex belonging to an uncle of the eldest of the group, Umer Farooq, 25, according to Chief Anwar.

“We had tips from local people and work of field officers that some foreigners were residing in some area of the city,” the chief said. “We watched them for a day or so and then arrested them.”

Mr. Farooq’s parents were staying at the house at the time, and his father, Khalid, was arrested as well. The police chief said the elder Mr. Farooq knew that his son and the other men were being hunted by the F.B.I., but had failed to inform the authorities of their presence.

Umer Farooq’s mother, Sabria Farooq, who was wearing a traditional chador, was interviewed Thursday at the house. She said she and her husband emigrated to the United States 20 years ago from Sargodha and returned in September to start a computer business, similar to the one they have in the Virginia suburbs close to Washington.

The five men seemed to have plenty of money, according to the police. Mrs. Farooq said one of the men, Waqar Khan, had brought $25,000 from the United States for the trip. In Karachi, the men stayed in a “good local hotel” before moving to Hyderabad, Pakistan, to make contact with a religious school, the police said.

The police identified the others arrested in Sargodha as Ramy Zamzam, 22, a dental student of Egyptian background at Howard University, who was described as a sort of “ringleader”; Ahmed Abdullah Minni, 20, born in Eritrea; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18, a native Ethiopian. Mr. Khan is of Pakistani background and was reported to have family connections in Karachi. The spellings of the men’s names in various documents and provided by various officials have varied.

The five men bonded together in the jihadi cause, watching jihadist video clips on YouTube that showed attacks by the Taliban on allied forces in Afghanistan, he said. The group also maintained a common e-mail address, Chief Anwar said, employing a technique widely used among militants.

Before they left the United States, the men appeared to have come to the attention of an Islamic militant, identified as Saifullah, through their YouTube activities, the police chief said. Saifullah, who has links to Al Qaeda, traced their e-mail addresses through YouTube, Chief Anwar said.

After establishing the Internet connection with the militant, the men planned their journey to Pakistan and into North Waziristan, where they intended to train near Miram Shah, a headquarters of the Afghan Taliban, the police said.

The men were carrying laptops and maps of Miram Shah, and also of Kohat and Hangu, two major towns in the North-West Frontier Province that serve as the gateway to the tribal areas, the police said.

Sargodha is increasingly well traveled by Pakistani militants from Punjab who head to the Waziristan region for training in explosives and weapons conducted by Taliban and Qaeda operatives.

In the past six months, 24 militants have been arrested in Sargodha, all with ties to the Taliban and Waziristan, the police said recently. “They want to hit America,” said one investigator, who requested anonymity while discussing security matters. “They were highly emotionally motivated.”



Waqar Gillani reported from Sargodha, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. Sabrina Tavernise also contributed reporting.