Posted on 06/11/2005 1:12:14 PM PDT by SmithL
LODI - Mohammad Saddiq Khan, after repeated, insistent phone calls from FBI agents, went down to the Lodi police station Friday afternoon to answer a few questions about a cousin in Pakistan.
Khalid Khan, 32, another cousin, submitted to a lie detector test earlier in the week in Sacramento. He said agents, through an Urdu interpreter, asked him where his family was, whom he meets at the local mosque and if he was a trained terrorist.
The Pakistani-American welder, a third-generation resident of this working-class farming community south of Sacramento, calmly said, "no" to the last question and passed the test.
"They're just fishing," Khan said, sipping sweet milky tea Thursday night, surrounded by his cousins and other family.
Earlier in the week, federal agents arrested a father and son from Lodi after the son failed a voluntary polygraph test and allegedly confessed to training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004.
Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, who the FBI says changed his story after viewing a video of his son's confession, are being held on suspicion of lying to agents about their knowledge of terrorist training camps.
Immigration officials then detained two local imams and one of their sons on suspicion of immigration violations. The arrests have sent waves of worry through the tight-knit Pakistani community in Lodi as federal agents expand their questioning to Bay Area Muslims.
Hundreds of men gathered at the Poplar Street mosque for Friday afternoon prayers and heard a sermon focusing on Koranic views of humanity and unity.
After the service, worshippers filed out shaking hands, and returned to their homes, many with shades drawn, to await calls from the FBI in what Muslim leaders describe as a divisive federal investigation.
Muslims in the community now joke that they have their own special agents, said Basim Elkarra, director of the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Since the arrests, nondescript sedans and SUVs with tinted windows have cased the residential streets around the small Lodi Muslim Mosque. FBI agents knock on doors and ask for interviews with local Muslims.
Pakistani teenagers in the park point out the FBI agents circling the neighborhood. They point to four small planes circling the airspace above.
Elkarra has spoken with at least a dozen men who have been questioned by the FBI in the past week, he said. The FBI has said its investigation in the Lodi area goes back several years, but local Muslims only became aware of the FBI presence after the arrests.
"We felt that we built pretty good relations with the local FBI," Elkarra said, noting that in the past he had help arrange community meetings with the FBI to discuss concerns from Muslims, including complaints about agents approaching people at work.
The most recent meeting was before November's election, Elkarra said. Several imams attended the meeting, including Mohammad Adil Khan, who is now among those being detained.
Adil Khan had been raising money to build an Islamic school on 18 acres south of Lodi for several years. When he arrived in the Bay Area, he started looking for a place to build a school and eventually came to Lodi.
The Lodi mosque already had plans to build a school, but Adil Khan helped locate a larger parcel, community members said.
Since then, fights have broken out within the Muslim community about the project, though plans are moving ahead. San Joaquin County planning commissioners will vote on it next week.
"There has been some thought that those who oppose the school may have started this," said attorney Brian Chavez-Ochoa, who represents several area Muslims and has accompanied them to FBI interviews.
"The bottom line is the Islamic community in Lodi completely supports the FBI investigation," he said.
He advises Muslim men to answer questions, but said they should not submit to voluntary polygraph tests, as the FBI says Hamid Hayat did, because the tests are subject to wide interpretation.
When Khalid Khan passed his polygraph test in Sacramento, agents told him he was cleared and gave him back his U.S. and Pakistani passports. Agents returned to Khan's home Thursday evening and wanted to ask more questions.
Agents want to talk to people without attorneys present, Chavez-Ochoa said.
"The bulk of the Muslim community there in Lodi are American citizens," the attorney said. That means they cannot be detained or questioned without probable cause.
Among those questioned is Mohammad Saddiq Khan, 42, who has lived in Lodi for 25 years and is a custodian at a local cannery.
His grandfather came to California in 1938. About a dozen families from his Pakistani hometown of Baffa now live in Lodi.
Many of them, including the Khan family, have kept close ties to their native country. Both Mohammad Saddiq's and Khalid Khan's wives and children are in Baffa now; the two men plan to stick together through the FBI probe.
Agents wanted Mohammad Saddiq to come to the Lodi police station Friday afternoon for another interview. He told them several times he wanted an attorney.
His cousin called Elkarra, who tried to arrange counsel. Eventually Saddiq decided he had to go, and went to the police station without a lawyer.
"I said, 'OK, I want to answer,'" he said after the brief interview. "I told (the FBI) I don't need the FBI coming to my house anymore."
Being MooSlime IS probable cause. Your stuuuupid dog turd death cult moon rock god demands you to be killers. Probable cause is your religions middle name!
And craven, idiot liberals think this is so very unfair.
The first article I saw on this, I think this is Lodi NJ, right?
Mohammad Saddiq Khan, is from NJ and Khalid Khan, CA?
Nope. CA.
Doesn't matter if he's a citizen of Mars. Muslim is the keyword here.
POS People!!!
An investigation is one thing. They lost me at demanding "voluntary" lie detector tests and wanting to question people without an attorney present. I'd be telling them to pound sand at that point, and I wouldn't blame these people for doing it either. I'm not willing to flush my rights and neither should they.
Let me get this straight, sending your son to a terrorist camp to learn to kill Christians is not divisive, but an investigation into the practice is. I'm thinking that Muslims are a little too sensitive to live amongst us mean spirited Americans and should return to to their Islamic cesspits homelands.
Oh, thank you. Than I misread the first article.
"Probable cause is your religions middle name!"
Truer words were never spoken, especially since it has come to light that the freakish Saudi Wahabis have spent millions upon millions to build, take over, and radicalize mosques and Muslims in America. If you aren't a Sunni Muslim, then the Hezbollah gang has probably infiltrated your Shi'ite mosque.
GO FBI! Stay on the case. The ACLU and CAIR, as always, can kiss my grits.
"The investigation into an Al-Qa'eda cell in a small California town has discovered a larger than expected Al-Qa'eda cell."
NOT a crime?
add to that , this :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4084038.stm
Just about a year ago,
I set out on the road,
Seeking my fame and fortune,
Looking for a pot of gold.
Things got bad, and things got worse,
I guess you will know the tune.
Oh ! Lord, Stuck in Lodi again.
Rode in on the Greyhound,
I'll be walking out if I go.
I was just passing through,
Must be seven months or more.
Ran out of time and money,
Looks like they took my friends.
Oh ! Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again.
The man from the magazine said I was on my way.
Somewhere I lost connections, ran out of songs to play.
I came into town, a one night stand,
Looks like my plans fell through
Oh ! Lord, Stuck in Lodi again.
Mmmm...
If I only had a dollar, for ev'ry song I've sung.
And ev'ry time I've had to play
While people sat there drunk.
You know, I'd catch the next train back to where I live.
Oh ! Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again.
Oh ! Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again.
Life is tough and shi'ite happens!
Tough bananas! If they don't like the scrutiny - LEAVE!!
You are not being helpful. Ever since I heard this story on the morning news, that song has been stuck in my mind, replaying in an endless loop, just like the 8-track tape when I originally bought that album.
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