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Source: Reuters -
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US FBI agents and their Pakistani colleagues interrogated five
young American Muslims who wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight
US-led forces, Pakistani officials said.
The case is bound to fan fears in Western countries that the sons
of immigrants from Muslim countries are being drawn to violent
Islamist militancy, a process made easier by the internet.
The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were
detained this week in the city of Sargodha in Punjab province, 190
km southeast of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
The case has again focused attention on nuclear-armed Pakistan's
performance in fighting militants as Washington presses Islamabad
to root out Islamist fighters crossing the border to attack US-led
troops in Afghanistan.
The five tried to contact militants and stayed in touch with each
other through the internet, Pakistani security officials said,
highlighting the difficulty authorities' face in trying to track
and disrupt plots organised on the Web.
Police in Sargodha had taken the first step towards filing charges
with complaints based on laws pertaining to foreigners and use of
computers to organise crime.
"A case has been registered against the five for violating
Pakistan's foreigners and cyber acts," Sargodha police chief Usman
Anwar said.
Pakistani agents and colleagues from the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) were interrogating the five, said a Pakistani
security official.
"They are still in Sargodha and they are being investigated by us
as well as the FBI," said the official, who declined to be
identified.
Brainwashed
Another Pakistani security official said the five had visited a
madrasa, or Islamic religious school, in the southern city of
Hyderabad saying they wanted to join jihad, or Muslim holy
war.
The school turned them away, he said.
The hapless five had then tried to contact an Islamist charity, the
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, linked to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant
group, in the city of Lahore.
They failed there too as they had no guarantor, the official
said.
"These are five raw men who had been brainwashed," said the
security official.
The five were found with maps and had intended to travel through
northwest Pakistan to the al Qaeda and Taliban militant stronghold
of Miranshah, in the lawless North Waziristan region on the Afghan
border.
"Their ultimate destination was Afghanistan. They wanted to go to
Afghanistan for jihad," the official said.
It is not clear if the five will be prosecuted in Pakistan or sent
back to the United States.
In Washington, the FBI said discussions were underway on their
possible return.
The suspects were wary about being detected through sending emails
so instead they shared a password so different members of their
group could access the same email site and read messages saved
there as drafts, the first Pakistani official said.
"It's a very difficult job to dismantle such networks which operate
through the internet," he said.
The suspects were being investigated for links with the banned
Jaish-e-Mohammad group, but it was not clear to what extent they
had developed contacts.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of the Prophet Mohammad, has links
with al Qaeda and the Taliban and is one of several factions with
roots in Punjab province which have been battling Indian forces in
disputed Kashmir.
