ISLAMABAD // A Pakistani court sentenced five young Americans to 10 years in prison on terrorism charges yesterday, according to lawyers in the case. The five, all in their 20s and from Virginia, were arrested in December in Sargodha, a city in Punjab province, and have been held in jail there since.
Police officials maintained that the men had travelled to Pakistan to plot terrorist attacks and had contact with militant organisations. The judge, Mian Anwar Nazir, of the anti-terrorism court announced the verdict amid tight security inside the central prison in Sargodha. Apart from the prison term, a fine of US$823 (Dh3,000) was also imposed on each individual for conspiracy against the state, according to Rana Bakhtiar Ali, the deputy prosecutor general of Punjab. He said the prosecution would appeal for an increase in the sentence.
Hasan Dastgir Katchela, the defence lawyer, while expressing disappointment over the verdict, said his clients would appeal against their conviction. A representative of the US Embassy was present to hear the verdict in Sargodha. A spokesperson for the embassy in Islamabad was later quoted as saying that the judgment of the Pakistani court would be respected. The case had attracted a lot of interest as it once again highlighted an increasing number of western individuals traveling to Pakistan to plot terrorist attacks or undertake militant training in the lawless tribal regions that straddle the border with Afghanistan.
Earlier this week, Faisal Shahzad, an American of Pakistani origin, pleaded guilty in a US court to trying to detonate a bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1. He travelled to the tribal region of North Waziristan last year to receive military training, according to Pakistani and US officials. Shehzad had also formed a network of likeminded individuals unhappy with US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The five Americans, Umar Farooq and Waqar Khan, who are of Pakistani origin; Ramy Zamzam, a dental student of Egyptian descent at Howard University; Aman Hassan Yemer, originally from Ethiopia; and Ahmad Abdullah Minni, a native of Eritrea, were radicalised in the United States, according to investigators. They started visiting websites of Jihadi organisations and developed militant aspirations after making contacts with a Pakistani militant, Saifullah, over the internet.
In December 2009, they were reported missing by their families in the United States. They soon surfaced in Pakistan as police raided a house in Sargodha, a city known for its Pakistan Air Force base. The young men claimed they were visiting Pakistan to attend Farooq's wedding at his ancestoral home in Sargodha, and planned to proceed to Afghanistan to undertake humanitarian work. But during the course of the court proceedings, the prosecution and investigators maintained that the presence of the men in Pakistan was for a far more sinister reason.
The young men initially travelled to the southern city Hyderabad where they unsuccessfully tried to enroll at a madrassa run by a banned militant group, Jaish-e-Muhammad. From there, they went to the eastern city of Lahore and tried to make contact with Jamat-ud Dawa, a charity front for the banned militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba, which Indian and US officials accuse of carrying out the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. But they were shunned there as well.
They were arrested in Sargodha after police received an intelligence tip-off about the presence of foreigners acting suspiciously, according to an investigator of the case. Apparently, the foreign bearing of the men and lack of credible contacts drew suspicions among local radical groups. Police had presented a charge sheet of 250 pages. The prosecution also produced before the court printouts of e-mails, records of mobile phone conversations and maps that had markings of an air force base and a nuclear power plant site as potential targets.
During the trial, which was not open to media, a total of 19 witnesses recorded their statements according to lawyers in the case. A total of five cases were registered against the Americans. They were acquitted in three while convicted in two. The accused men remained silent as the verdict was read out to them, according to lawyers. They had earlier claimed they had been tortured while in prison, a charge denied by Pakistani authorities.
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