The five American nationals who came to Pakistan for jihad and were detained earlier this week, sought to join two anti-India militant groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Toiba front organisation Jamat-ud-dawa, but were turned away apparently because they could not show the right credentials.
The five, the oldest of whom is 24 years and the youngest 18 years, were detained from a house in Sargodha in Pakistan's Punjab province on December 9, following a manhunt initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
Sargodha police have told journalists that they might be deported to the US. A team of the FBI officials questioned them on Thursday.
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Two of the men, Umer Farooq and Waqar Hussain Khan, are Pakistani-origin, while the other three are Egyptian, Ethiopian and Eritrean-origin. They were first reported missing by their families in the Washington D.C area in mid-November.
The parents of one of the boys is reported to have grown concerned and approached the FBI when they found a jihadist going-away video showing battle scenes and calls for jihad against infidels.
The five were held on December 9 in Sargodha, a town in central Punjab, where they were put up at the house of Umer's uncle.
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A police report of the interrogation of the five men seen by The Hindu says they had a deep interest in Islam and wanted to wage a jihad against "infidels" to avenge what they saw as atrocities being committed by them against Muslims the world over.
One of them, Ahmed Abdullaj Minni, was a regular watcher of YouTube videos showing attacks on American military installations, and he often left comments praising the videos. It was through this that he was contacted by a person called "Saifullah," the person with whom they made a plan to go to Afghanistan for jihad.
The group first flew into Karachi on November 30 with legal visas. The very next day, all five made their way to Hyderabad, where they approached a madrassa. The madrassa management is said to have turned them away and advised them to approach the Jamat-ud-dawa in Lahore instead. But the JuD also turned them away.