Islamabad: The Lahore High Court has issued an order asking Pakistan government not to deport five American Muslims arrested in an alleged terror plot.
Earlier, US embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire said that American men were in the custody of Pakistani police. A total of six US nationals had been detained in the eastern city of Sargodha, located nearly 200 km from Islamabad.
A US consular officer had been granted access to the detained persons and a FBI team had also questioned them, Snelsire said.
Pakistani police officials have said five of the detained US nationals, all Muslims in their twenties, wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight the US-led forces.
They tried unsuccessfully to link up with the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed in the southern city of Hyderabad and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah in Lahore but both groups reportedly turned them away, sources said.
Sources also said preliminary investigations had indicated the youths were also in contact with some Al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan.