CHRONIQUE DE L'ISLAMISATION DES USA

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Five 'home grown' American Muslims jailed for ten years in Pakistan for terror plot

Five American students were today sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Pakistan for contacting militants online and plotting attacks.

The students, in their 20s, were detained in December in Pakistan's central city of Sargodha, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of Islamabad.

Deputy Prosecutor Raa Bakhtiar said the men were convicted on two counts each, with one carrying a 10-year sentence and the other carrying five years, to be served concurrently. They were also fined a total of 70,000 rupees ($820).

'Both these sentences will begin concurrently and in practice they will spend 10 years in jail. We will appeal in the high court to enhance the sentence,' Bakhtiar told reporters.

Waqar Hussain Khan, Ahmed Minni, Ramy Zamzam, Aman Yemer and Umar Farooq were each charged with five counts of conspiracy, raising funds for terrorist acts, planning war against Pakistan, directing others to launch attacks and attempting to cross the Afghan border illegally.

Deputy prosecutor Bakhtiar said the court issued the 10-year sentences for conspiracy and five years for raising funds. The other charges were dropped.

The sentencing took place amid high security and journalists were not allowed inside the courtroom. Lawyers from both sides announced the sentences outside the jail.

The five men told the court earlier that they only wanted to provide fellow Muslim brothers in Afghanistan with medicine and financial help, and accused the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Pakistani police of torturing them and trying to frame them.

Hassan Katchela, a defence lawyer for the group, said the sentences would be appealed.

'We are a bit surprised because we believed it was not a case for conviction,' he said.

'We are confident and we are going to file appeals against these conviction in the high court.'

After the sentencing, one of the men's father expressed his dismay.

'It's the greatest disappointment,' said Khalid Farooq, father of Umar Farooq.

'The judge didn't even bother to go through evidence against them. It was so weak.'

Two of the five are of Pakistani origin. The others are from Egyptian, Yemeni and Eritrean origins.

The students were arrested days after arriving in Pakistan last year.

Pakistani police said emails showed they contacted militants, who had planned to use them for attacks in Pakistan.

Five 'home grown' American Muslims jailed for ten years in Pakistan for terror plot | Mail Online


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Pakistan madrassas 'do not stoke militancy' ~ ahem!

Girls from the Red Mosque madrassa, Islamabad.

Pack away the guns and ammunition the inspectors are coming!!

To make a statement that Pakistan's madrassas do not stoke militancy is crazy. Where the evidence shows otherwise. Take the girls from the Red Mosque, a school parked right across from the Defence Ministry in Pakistan's capital Islamabad. The trouble started when the girls were sent out with sticks to enforce Islamic law on the local area. And became an international incident when they arrested/took hostage a few Chinese massage workers. The Chinese government said they could understand this happening in the outlying areas of Pakistan but not in the capital. When the Pakistan authorities finally moved into the school, the burqaed teenage girls, where shouting from the roof of the school ~ in the few days it took to finally break into the place ~ that they were willing to die as martyrs for Allah. The average school doesn't teach this.

When they finally brought the fortress school down ~ the brothers were in a shoot out against the police ~ there was an arsenal of weapons stored inside the mosque. Anti-tank mines, missiles guns ~ hardware! Further when the mosque leader was released from prison ~ captured trying to escape the mayhem in a burqa ~ he claimed in a speech in the tribal lands ~ that the rise militancy was in large part due to the work done in the Red Mosque.

There was another Pakistan madrassa which mysteriously exploded! There was the one kid caught coming over the Afghan border in a suicide vest ~ who said he was trained in a madrassa. There was reading the Koran for most of the day and military training in the evenings. There was also the documentary of the American kids, who spent a few years in a Pakistani madrassa. And by the end of filming they were completely brainwashed. Anti-American anti-western ~ probably bordering on anti-life ~ and because they are American they are going back home.

It is irresponsible to make the claim ~ that militancy does to arise from these madrassas.

The report does rightly points out what a mess the Pakistani school system is in. There was one famous report that looked at what some of the state schools were teaching kids. A for Allah, J for Jihad and in their own language B for Gun.

Islamic schools - or madrassas - in Pakistan are not stoking militancy or extremism, a report by a leading US think-tank has concluded.

The Brookings Institution report says that while religious schools are often cited as a cause of extremism, they 'appear not to be a major risk factor'.

The report says that fewer than 10% of Pakistani students attended madrassas.

It says that the real cause of militancy in the country is the poor public education system.

Urgent priority
Report co-author Rebecca Winthrop, a Brookings fellow, said that number of militant madrassas was not increasing.

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