This Article is From Dec 11, 2009

Pak say 5 Americans wanted to fight US

Sargodha, Pakistan: Five young Muslim American men arrested here on Wednesday were on their way to the heart of the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal areas with the intention of training to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani police authorities said Thursday.

The men, a tight circle of friends in their late teens and 20s from the Washington suburbs, had been in contact through YouTube and an Internet chat room with a Pakistani militant with links to al-Qaida before arriving in Pakistan on Nov. 30, said the Pakistani officials, who had firsthand knowledge of the case.

The militant told them to come to Pakistan, where he would help them get to Afghanistan to fight jihad, one Pakistani official said.

After touching down in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, the men tried to join an extremist Islamic school near Karachi and approached another extremist organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, in the eastern city of Lahore, the officials said.

They were rebuffed in both places because of their Western demeanor and their inability to speak the national language, Urdu, an investigator said. They then traveled to Sargodha, a city in northern Punjab, where they were picked up by the authorities en route to North Waziristan, a stronghold of al-Qaida and the Taliban, said the police chief of Sargodha, Usman Anwar.

It was unclear on Thursday how serious a threat the group presented, or whether the young men had broken any laws in Pakistan or the United States. The men were in FBI custody in Pakistan and would probably be deported, a senior Obama administration official in Washington 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 vast 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, FBI 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-Qaida after traveling to Pakistan in 2008.

The five men in the current group all put 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 Anwar.

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

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 Farooq knew that his son and the other men were being hunted by the FBI, 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.

A team of FBI investigators interviewed the five men in Sargodha on Thursday, Anwar said.

The five men seemed to have plenty of money, according to the police. Sabria 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 there, 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"; Ahmad Abdullah Mini, 20, born in Eritrea; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18, a native Ethiopian. Khan is of Pakistani background and was reported to have family connections in Karachi.

"They are U.S. nationals," Chief Anwar said. "They have valid U.S. passports and valid Pakistani visas."

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, 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-Qaida, traced their e-mail addresses through YouTube, 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, 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 Qaida operatives.

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

It was not clear, according to the police here, whether the men had been recruited to a specific militant or terrorist organization.

On Wednesday, a Pakistani official said that Khalid Farooq, the father of Umer, was believed to have ties to Jaish-e-Muhammad, a banned militant group originally created with help from Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies to fight India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. It was banned by the Pakistani government after the Sept. 11 attacks and has since joined forces with the Taliban and al-Qaida in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa, based on the outskirts of Lahore and where the five men were apparently turned away, is an arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group at the center of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

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