Posted on 08/26/2003 9:56:31 AM PDT by knighthawk
WASHINGTON: One of the three men who appeared in a US court on charges of running a local 'jehad' network has admitted to receiving arms training in northern Virginia and LeT's terror camp in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir for a possible mission in Jammu & Kashmir.
While the three accused pleaded guilty of "conspiracy and gun charges" in the Federal Court in Virginia on Monday, Yong Ki Kwon admitted that, besides in US, he recieved training at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistan.
At the LeT camp, Kwon said he fired weapons ranging from machine guns to rocket-propelled grenades. Kwon, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan and Donald T Surratt were among the 11 people accused of being part of a local holy war network that trained to support LeT.
Yong told District Judge Leonie M Brinkema that the group possessed a variety of weapons and practiced military tactics while playing paintball in the Virginia countryside.
The 11 men are also charged with training in military tactics to support LeT and some of them, including Yong, visited Pakistan in 2001 to serve the militant group.
When asked by the Judge why the group trained in secret, Yong said: "We did not want any undue attention, and we did not want any trouble with the government."
Prosecutors have viewed the case as a key step in the war on terrorism and said that the men were part of a conspiracy to support "violent jehad" overseas.
They have presented no evidence that the men were plotting attacks on the US but, under the Neutrality Act, it is a crime to plot war against friendly countries from American soil, in this case India.
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