Replies

Bail denied for Lodi terrorism suspects

By Don Thompson, Associated Press

August 23, 2005

http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~21481~3023372,00.html

SACRAMENTO - A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected a request for a
bail hearing for a Lodi father and son held on terror-related charges.

In a related development, the government's chief prosecutor revealed
for the first time why two Lodi religious leaders caught up in the same
investigation were deported without being charged with a crime.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale Drozd ruled there were no new circumstances
that would justify releasing Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer
Hayat, 47. In June, both were ordered held without bail on charges of lying
to federal investigators about the younger man's alleged attendance at
an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

Drozd said there is "an extremely high flight risk" if the two were
freed, given their financial and family ties to Pakistan. But he told
defense attorneys they can try again by presenting evidence that they can
post a higher bail than they had previously proposed.

Umer Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin III, said the Hayats will offer
to put up as collateral Lodi properties he valued at more than $500,000,
though Drozd said even that wouldn't likely be enough to prompt their
release pending trial.

The two men are the only ones criminally charged despite a federal
investigation into alleged terror activities among Muslims in Lodi, an
agricultural town of 62,000 about 35 miles south of Sacramento.

Two Islamic religious leaders were ordered deported to Pakistan after
the government said they overstayed their religious visas. They were
never charged with any crime, despite the government's allegations that
they intended to set up a terror training camp in Lodi.

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said he remains convinced that Shabbir
Ahmed and Muhammad Adil Khan were a danger but said most of their
suspicious activities were in the past and in Pakistan.

"You had Muhammad Adil Khan being intimately associated with a radical
madrassah in Pakistan. His father is one of the godfathers of the
radical Muslim movement in Pakistan. He fought the Soviets in the Afghan war
in the late '70s," Scott said, speaking to the Sacramento Press Club.
"And then Shabbir we know gave speeches shortly after the American
invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 exhorting Pakistanis to go ...
kill Americans."

But Scott said he concluded that there was not enough evidence to
unanimously convince a 12-member jury that they were guilty of any crime.

"We have no doubt that these men posed a threat, but we have to be able
to prove what that threat was. So the conclusion was that ...
immigration was the better route to go because they will be out of here and they
will be barred from coming back," Scott said.

Saad Ahmad, the attorney who represented the men on their immigration
charges, said Scott's comments illustrate his clients' innocence.

"They haven't given us any concrete evidence that my clients were
involved in any criminal activities," he said. "Had they brought criminal
charges against my clients, the case would have been thrown out."

Khan was deported Aug. 15, while Ahmed's deportation is imminent,
officials said.