Five young Americans detained in Pakistan, which is fighting an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency, wanted to join a jihad, or holy war, a police official said yesterday.
The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were detained this week in the city of Sargodha in Punjab Province, 190km southeast of Islamabad, security officials said.
“Our police came to know that some foreigners are staying here and their arrival here is suspicious. We watched them for one and a half days and then arrested them,” Usman Anwar, police chief of Sargodha, told reporters. “We seized laptops and other things from their possession. Later we came to know that they have come here with the intention of jihad.”
The case will fan fears in the US and other Western countries that the sons of immigrants from Muslim countries are being drawn to violent Islamist militancy.
Pakistan is under pressure to root out militants crossing its borders to attack US-led troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
The US FBI said in a statement released in the US on Wednesday it was in contact with the families of the five as well as law-enforcement authorities in Pakistan.
Another Pakistani security official said the five were detained on Monday. They had flown into the city of Karachi on Nov. 30 and then traveled to Lahore on Saturday, and then on to Sargodha, he said.
“No charge has been framed against them. Investigations are under way as to whether they have any links with extremist groups,” the second Pakistani official said.
Officials said three Pakistanis had also been detained, one of whom was believed to have been linked to a 2007 suicide bomb attack on an air force bus outside an air base in Sargodha in which eight people were killed.
“Some mobile phone SIMs and computer disks have also been recovered,” another Pakistani agent said.
A US embassy spokesman said it was trying to confirm the identities of the five and was working closely with the Pakistan government.
Pakistan news reports said the suspects were being investigated for links with the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group. The Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of the Prophet Mohammed, has links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
It is one of several factions with roots in Punjab Province that have been battling Indian forces in disputed Kashmir.
The group was suspected of involvement in several high-profile attacks including the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and an assassination attempt on former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.
Rashid Rauf, a British militant suspected of being ringleader of a 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, was also a Jaish member.
Officials said one of the Americans was of Egyptian origin, one of Yemeni origin and another of Eritrean origin.
A US Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it brought the case to the attention of US law-enforcement authorities this month after family members informed CAIR of the men’s disappearance.
The national executive director of CAIR, Nihad Awad, told a news conference an 11-minute video was left behind that appeared to be a “farewell” from the men.
Awad said he had watched the video and found it disturbing. It did not say what the men planned but dealt with conflicts in the world and featured verses of the Koran, he said.
News of the arrests came as a Chicago man with Pakistani roots, accused of scouting targets for last year’s Mumbai attacks in India, pleaded not guilty in a Chicago court on Wednesday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS