Tips From Islamic-American Community Helped Nab 5 Suspects in Pakistan

Leaders of the Islamic community in the U.S. today said they believed that it was information from community organizations and affected families that led to the arrests in Pakistan of five Washington, D.C., area men on terrorism-related charges. At a press conference in D.C. on Wednesday afternoon, representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said that they arranged for members of the families of the five men to get in touch with the FBI and lawyers. The CAIR representatives said they set up the contact with the FBI earlier this month after people in the Washington area Islamic community had contacted a CAIR leader to express concern about how the five men had been missing for several days under mysterious circumstances.

Subsequently, Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, said that he learned that one of thefive men had left behind a video message. Awad said he had viewed the message and that appeared to be some kind of "farewell" statement which, Awad indicated, cited Quran verses out of religiously orthodox contexts. Awad and several other Islamic community leaders said at the press conference that the case of the five men indicates that the Islamic community in the U.S. had a problem with radicalization of youth, although they stressed that this problem was limited to a very small minority.

Three U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing a continuing investigation, told NEWSWEEK that the government was intensively investigating the men's disappearance, and that it is unclearwhat would happen next in the case. One official said he could not confirm reports from Pakistan indicating that the men may quickly be sent back to the U.S. rather than held by Pakistani authorities. One of the officials said that there were many open questions facing investigators, such as how the men came together as a group (and CAIR officials confirmed they went together as a group to Pakistan), how they might have become radicalized, who told them where to go in Pakistan and how they financed their trip. One of the biggest questions investigators say is still unanswered: what the farewell video was about, and what the men apparently were planning to do. Investigators say they are still trying to figure outwhether the men had drawn up a particular plan of action or were planning somekind of attack on a specific target either inside the U.S. or overseas.

One of the officials did confirm that all the men arrested in Pakistan are believed to be U.S. citizens, though one or more may have been born outside the U.S. The Islamic community leaders and one of the U.S. officials also said all of the men came from Northern Virginia. One of the community leaders at the CAIR press conference acknowledged that one of the missing men was a student at Washington’s Howard University. Although CAIR did not disclose the names of any of the men, the Howard student has been identified as Ramy Zamzam.