Pakistan police said on Thursday they would seek terror charges and life imprisonment for five Americans accused of coming to the country to carry out attacks.
A Pakistani court last Friday remanded the five Americans in custody for another 10 days after police sought more time to complete their investigations.
The men were arrested in the town of Sargodha last month on suspicion of trying to contact al-Qaeda-linked groups and engage in militant activities, possibly in the northwest.
“Our investigation is complete and we will request the court during the next hearing to put the five men on trial under the anti-terrorism act and hand them down life imprisonment,” senior police official Tahir Gujjar said.
He said that the five men, who had recently been taken to the city of Lahore, were brought back to Sargodha on Thursday to complete the investigation process.
‘ACTS OF TERROR’
“It has now been established that the five men had contacts with militants, some of them foreigners, in South Waziristan, and they had come to Pakistan to carry out acts of terror,” Gujjar said.
Gujjar said police would submit evidence against the five Americans on Monday, the next scheduled court hearing.
The men, who are all US citizens with dual nationality including two Pakistani-Americans, have also been questioned by the FBI.
Police had earlier said they were looking for a man the suspects had contacted and who was believed to have links with al-Qaeda.
Another senior police official in Sargodha, Usman Anwar, confirmed that the police had ended their investigation.
“Police will not seek further custody of the boys and on the date of the next hearing they will be sent to jail,” Anwar said.
LINKS
Police had earlier said they were looking for a man the suspects had contacted and who was believed to have links with al-Qaeda.
Senior police official Haseeb Shah said last week that in a message saved in a common e-mail account, the man mentioned the name of a Pakistani nuclear plant.
“We hope that the evidence found from their laptops could lead to the breaking up of a terrorist network,” Shah said.
There has been concern in the US that extremists within Pakistan might try to take control of nuclear assets or attack atomic facilities, despite insistence from Western officials that the assets are safe.
A Pakistani court on Dec. 17 ordered that the five suspects cannot be deported without its permission.
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