Legal Commentary

Pakistani Interrogation Report Released

By Jeralyn

ABC News has obtained the Pakistani report on the interrogations of the five men who were reported missing in the U.S. and arrested in Pakistan. (Report available here.) Three of the five were born in the U.S. From the report:

They were all college students. They had deep interest in the religion and they were of the opinion that a Jihad must be waged against the infidels for the atrocities committed by them against Muslims around the world. Among them Ahmed Abdullah Minni used to regularly visit the internet page of YouTube. He used to the praise the videos which showed attacks on the US Army and Installations. This became a regular feature and Minni, a registered user of YouTube, regularly praised such attacks. Soon after, Minni was contacted by a person named “Saifullah”.

The five had an interesting way of e-mailing each other: [More...]

They used to write an email and then save it in the drafts section of the email. The other person used to log on to the same account and leave another message on the draft. This mode of communication enabled them to pass on messages without fear of interception by the FBI.

According to the report, the five were headed to Afghanistan and stopped in Pakistan. But no extremist group would accept them.

When arrested, the police seized their laptops, external hard drives, iPod, mobile phones.
Laptops.

That's the extent of the report. But, authorities say,

[T]hey were arrested on a tip from the FBI after their families back home reported them missing. "They had left video cassettes back there for their parents," said Usman Anwar of the Sargodha police, "that they have left for jihad and they wouldn't be back, so we suppose that they were here for some very bad activities."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 11, 2009 (boomark / email).