Pakistan Charges Americans With Terrorism

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LAHORE, Pakistan — Five young American Muslims detained in Pakistan last December on suspicion of seeking to join jihadists in Afghanistan were formally charged Wednesday, in a case that added to fears that Westerners might be increasingly be turning to Islamist-inspired terrorism.

The five men, friends from the Washington suburbs in their late teens and early 20s, pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include plotting attacks in Afghanistan as well as raising funds to commit terrorism and planning attacks against Pakistani allies and targets within the country, according to Hassan Katchela, a defense lawyer for the men. Some of the charges carry life sentences.

The five are Ramy ZamZam, a dental student of Egyptian descent at Howard University; Ahmed Abdullah Minni, a native of Eritrea; Aman Hassan Yemer, originally from Ethiopia; and Umar Farooq and Waqar Khan, who are of Pakistani background. They are next scheduled to appear in court on March 31, when the government is expected to present evidence in the case.

The filing of formal charges indicated that the men were not likely to be deported to the United States anytime soon, a possibility raised by American officials in the days after their arrest.

Pakistani authorities have said that the men, encouraged by Internet contacts with a Pakistani militant, traveled to Pakistan last year seeking to wage jihad against American troops in Afghanistan. They were arrested in mid-December in the city of Sargodha, and have been jailed there since.

At a closed-door hearing on Wednesday, a district judge in Sargodha read a three-page description of the five charges that have been filed against each of the men. In addition to plotting attacks in Afghanistan, they were accused of planning assaults on a Pakistani nuclear power plant and Pakistani air force bases in Sargodha and the central city of Mianwali, Mr. Katchela, the defense lawyer, said in a telephone interview.

The case of the five young men numbers among a handful of high-profile terrorism cases that have recently stirred concerns about the radicalization of Muslims in the United States.

Earlier this month, a New Jersey man accused of joining Al Qaeda was arrested in a sweep in Yemen, then fatally shot a security guard at the hospital where he had been taken for treatment, the authorities said. And a federal indictment unsealed last week tied a Pennsylvania woman who used the Internet moniker JihadJane to a plot to kill a Swedish artist who depicted the head of the Prophet Muhammad on a dog’s body.

David C. Headley, a Chicago man, was accused last December of helping to scout out locations for the deadly attacks on Mumbai, India, in 2008, and has also been charged with planning to attack a Danish newspaper that incensed many Muslims by printing cartoons with the image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr. Headley is expected to plead guilty on Thursday.

Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant who worked at a coffee stand in lower Manhattan, pleaded guilty in February to plotting to explode a bomb on the New York subway system. American authorities called the case one of the most serious threats since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other cases that have drawn concern include the several Somali-Americans in Minnesota who have returned to Africa to fight with Islamic militants who control much of Somalia, the Muslim-American psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a Long Island man who converted to Islam and traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join up with militants.


Waqar Gillani reported from Lahore, and Jack Healy from New York.