FBI investigating five terror suspects under arrest

Pakistani and US authorities said they were investigating the case of five US nationals arrested as terror suspects in Pakistan. The men were living in Virginia until they disappeared last month.

AFP - Pakistani authorities were Thursday questioning at least five US nationals with alleged links to Al-Qaeda, arrested on suspicion of plotting a militant strike, police and officials said.
   
The men were detained Wednesday in the eastern town of Sargodha, at the home of a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of a number of militant groups active in Pakistan, which is battling a fierce Islamist insurgency.
   
Security officials said the detainees were planning to strike "sensitive installations" in Pakistan and that maps and laptops were found, while FBI personnel had also been given access to the detainees.
   
Muslim leaders in Washington said the five men had been living in northern Virginia until they disappeared last month, while FBI officials said they were looking into whether the missing men were indeed the men being held in Pakistan.
   
"People who have been arrested are US nationals, but some of them are of Pakistan origin and some of them are of other origins... I will not get into specifics," foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit told a news briefing.
   
Sargodha district police chief Usman Anwar -- who interrogated the suspects -- told AFP that they were picked up on suspicion of having links to Al-Qaeda and other outlawed extremist groups in Pakistan.
   
"Five foreigners -- two of them Pakistani-Americans, one Egyptian, one Ethiopian and one Eritrean -- have been arrested," he said.
   
"We have also arrested Khalid Chaudhry, father of the two Pakistani-American brothers aged 22 and 25 years, who is also an American national and local leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad, for harbouring these five people."
   
Another senior Sargodha police official, Haseeb Shah, told AFP: "A two-member FBI team has arrived in Sargodha to interrogate the six men."
   
A US embassy spokesman in Islamabad was unable to confirm that US nationals were being held in Pakistan, saying they were investigating the arrests in Sargodha, about 180 kilometres (110 miles) south of the capital Islamabad.
   
Officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) told reporters in the US relatives of the men contacted the organisation on December 1 after they went missing from their homes close to the capital.
   
Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director, said the families brought along a farewell video showing one of the five men delivering a "final statement", and which included war images and Koranic verses.
   
After viewing the video, CAIR contacted the FBI and turned over the footage and information about the missing men.
   
FBI officials in Washington refused to confirm their nationalities, saying it was working with the families and Pakistani law enforcement "to determine their identities and the nature of their business there, if indeed these are the students who had gone missing".
   
A senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that five of the men had arrived in Pakistan on November 30 from England.
   
"They had boarded a plane from Heathrow airport on November 28 and came to Pakistan via Dubai. We have confiscated three laptops and other sensitive material including maps of Pakistan," he said.
   
"They have close links with Al-Qaeda and one of its allies in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi... it can be confirmed that they had plans to strike sensitive installations in the country".
   
Pakistan is in the grip of a fierce insurgency by Islamist extremists, with more than 2,680 people killed in attacks since July 2007.
   
Outlawed militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad was formed in 1994 to fight Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, while Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is a banned Sunni outfit which has links to both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
   
Pakistan has launched military offensives against the Taliban in the northwest this year, but Washington is pressing Islamabad to also hunt down Al-Qaeda-linked militants and groups that strike foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Date created : 2009-12-10