5 Americans detained in Pakistan; no reason given.
Pakistani police said they arrested five U.S. citizens Wednesday in a raid in the east of the country, but declined to give a reason for the detentions.
The men were picked up at a house in Sarghoda in Punjab province, police officer Tahir Gujjar said.
He said three of the men are of Pakistani descent, one is of Egyptian descent and the other is of Yemeni heritage.
Jafis are watching this for a possible terrorism link, but I think it’s more likely the Pakistanis would accuse them of being Blackwater operatives given the intensity of wishful thinking in that country right now…
Of course, they could turn out to be innocent, or some other flavor of criminal…
johnpi 12:33 pm on December 9, 2009 Permalink |
Update: More info.
pi.info 4:16 pm on December 9, 2009 Permalink |
More info:
And this, “…one of the guys was/is president of the Muslim Student Association…”
Other nifty things you can read at Refugee Resettlement Watch:
The “authoritive” source for the stripper rumor – a version of which was also heard in the news coming from Todd Petruna – is none other than Robert Spencer.
pi.info 4:48 pm on December 9, 2009 Permalink |
Five named:
Initial investigations have identified them as Ahmed Abdullah, Waqar Hassan Khan, Eman Hassan, Yasir and Rami Zamzam.
Zamzam’s facebook page.
pi.info 5:16 pm on December 9, 2009 Permalink |
Bad company
According to the Pakistani news article linked above, they were in the house of a member of Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was the group that introduced suicide bombing to the Kashmir conflict.
Ahmed Rashid writes:
The head of the group, Azhar in this post, has been all over central Asia in different conflicts, and is also “credited with teaching Somalian warlords how to trim the fins of their rocket-propelled grenades so that they would explode in midair and bring down US helicopters,” Rashid writes. This may have led to the incident that was turned into a book and a movie called “Blackhawk Down.”