Posted on 08/10/2005 4:38:59 PM PDT by Indy Pendance
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors laid out their case against a Muslim cleric from Pakistan on Wednesday, alleging that he was involved in a northern California terror network with links to terror leader Usama bin Laden (search) and that his group was planning to set up a camp to train followers to kill Americans.
Shabbir Ahmed (search), 39, is only charged with overstaying his visa while he was heading a mosque in Lodi, a town of 62,000 about 30 miles south of Sacramento. The allegation about the terrorist camp came from an FBI agent's testimony during the immigration hearing.
"Do I believe he is planning a terror attack?" FBI agent Gary Schaaf said. "That's some of the information that has been provided to us."
He testified that Ahmed and others were in the fledgling stages of opening a terrorism training camp in Lodi.
Schaaf did not say what type of terrorist attacks were planned, but he said Ahmed was acting as an intermediary for bin Laden and other terrorists.
Arguing to keep Ahmed in custody, federal prosecutors used a "flow chart" showing him to be just a few rungs down the ladder from bin Laden.
According to the FBI, bin Laden would give orders to Taliban (search) commander, Jala Luddin Hoqqani, who would pass them on to Muhammed Adil Khan (search), another Lodi imam who is also in custody on visa violations.
Adil Khan would then tell Ahmed, his protege and head of the Lodi mosque, whose membership included Umer Hayat and his son Hamid Hayat, Pakistanis who face terror-related charges.
Federal government officials believe the group's long-term goal was to indoctrinate local Muslims in radical Islam in a kind of American "madrassa,” similar to the religious school in Pakistan where Ahmed and Adil Khan once worked.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Believe it or not, our idiot planning commission approved the school after all this was known. Liberalism at it's best. Must be PC you know.
I hope God will help us for our elected leaders are not seeking to protect us. My home was near Lodi, California, and it makes me shiver about what our government has dumped on us. We have no other country to go to, and we all should be screaming.
About a year after 9/11, they busted a Pakistani scientist at Lawrence Livermore for stealing secrets. Don't even get me started on how unwise is it to even allow a Pakistani national to work at our national labs - a topic for another day. In any case, without a specific conclusion, given the Khan network and ISI complicity in giving ongoing aid and comfort to AQ, I became fairly well convinced of the almost certain existence of substantial and diverse ISI operations here in Northern California. I must believe that they are well embedded in communities such as the Pakistani enclave in Lodi. Also here in the Bay Area proper as well.
Is there any way to get this on the 'Front Page' sidebar? Thanks!
As well as New York...
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