Asia-Pacific
Pakistani police: 5 Americans have al-Qaida link
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-11 06:42
SARGODHA: Five young American Muslims arrested in Pakistan met with representatives of an al-Qaida-linked group and asked for training but were turned down because they lacked references from trusted militants, a Pakistani law enforcement official said Thursday.
Another senior officer said the men wanted to fight jihad, or holy war, in northwestern Pakistan and against American troops in Afghanistan.
The young men apparently first tried to contact jihadist groups through Facebook and YouTube, then traveled to Pakistan to attempt personal meetings, a Pakistani diplomat in Washington said.
The case is another worrisome sign that Americans may be susceptible to recruitment to terrorist networks from within the United States. It comes on the heels of charges against a Chicago man accused of plotting international terrorism.
Yet in contrast to the Chicago case, police say the five captured in Pakistan failed to catch on with any terror network, and succeeded only in raising suspicions among locals, who reported them to Pakistani police.
Javed Islam, a regional police chief in Pakistan, said the men wanted to join Islamist militants in the country's tribal area before crossing into Afghanistan and said they met with a banned organization, Jaish-e-Mohammed in Hyderabad, and with representatives of a related group, Jamat-ud-Dawa, in Lahore.
"They were asking to be recruited, trained and sent on jihad," Islam said.
But Islam said those groups turned them down because they did not have any "references" from trusted militants.
Islam said the arrested Americans had spent the past few days in Sargodha, 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of the capital, Islamabad, before their arrest.
The men used the social networking site Facebook and the Internet video site YouTube to try to connect with extremist groups in Pakistan, said S.M. Imran Gardezi, the press minister at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. When they arrived in Pakistan, they took that effort to the street.
"They were trying to link up to some groups, but there is no evidence for now that there was a definite plan," Gardezi said.
Local Pakistanis became suspicious of the young men and tipped off police, he said. Police arrested the group in a home belonging to the uncle of one of the men. Gardezi said the uncle had past ties to extremist groups.
Gardezi said the men have not been turned over to the FBI and that Pakistan intended to carry out its own legal process.
Another Pakistani law enforcement official, Usman Anwar, the local police chief in Sargodha, told The Associated Press the five are "directly connected" to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
"They are proudly saying they are here for jihad" or holy war, Anwar said.
