Five American Muslims retract statement on joining Jihad

Five American Muslims arrested for allegedly plotting terror attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan today retracted their statement about plans to join the jehad against US forces during an appearance in an anti-terrorism court.

When the young men were produced in the anti-terrorism court in Sargodha district of Punjab province, they told the judge that they were innocent and had neither committed any crime nor had plans to do so.

The men—Ramy Zamzam, 22, Waqar Hussain Khan, 22, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, 20, Iman Hasan Yemer, 17 and Omar Farooq, 24 also told the court that they had been subjected to torture by the FBI and the Pakistani police.

The FBI had sent a team to Pakistan last month to question the youths. The youths slipped a note written on toilet paper to the media while leaving the court. The note read: "We have done nothing wrong. Please help us." The court adjourned the hearing of the case against them till February 16.

Earlier, police had submitted a chargesheet in the court that alleged the US nationals wanted to join hands with militants fighting in Afghanistan. The chargesheet also said they had plans to target important installations in Pakistan and to embrace 'shahadat' (martyrdom).

Senior police officials had also said that the youths had confessed that they had come to Pakistan to travel to Afghanistan to join the jehad against US forces in that country.

Former Inter-Services Intelligence agency official Khalid Khwaja, who has been given power of attorney by the US nationals to handle their legal affairs, filed a bail application in the anti-terrorism court.

The court issued notices asking the federal government to respond to the application by February 8.  Khwaja, who is the chairman of the NGO Defence of Human Rights, told PTI that the youths had done nothing wrong.

"They told me they had come here to meet their friends and they had no intention of committing terrorist acts," he said. The youths were suffering from diarrhoea because of the poor hygienic conditions in Sargodha prison, he claimed.

According to the charge sheet filed by police, the youths have been charged under provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act for criminal conspiracy against the state and plotting terror attacks in Pakistan and abroad. The maximum sentence for such offences is life imprisonment.