Six people, including two imams at South Florida mosques, have been indicted on federal charges of providing financial support and encouraging violence by the Pakistani Taliban, the U.S. attorney in Miami announced on Saturday.
The indictment, which was handed up on Thursday, charged Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, the imam at the Miami Mosque (also known as the Flagler Mosque), the oldest mosque in Miami. The indictment also charged two of the imam's sons: Izhar Khan, 24, the imam at the Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in nearby Margate, Florida; and Irfan Khan, 37, of North Lauderdale, Florida. All three men are American citizens who are originally from Pakistan, the authorities said.
The four-count indictment charges the Khans and three others living in Pakistan with conspiring to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas, as well as conspiring to provide about $45,000 in financial support to the Pakistani Taliban from 2008 to 2010.
“Despite being an Imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace,” Wilfredo A. Ferrer, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “Instead, as today's charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming.”
Hafiz and Izhar Khan are scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami on Monday afternoon. Irfan Khan will be arraigned in Los Angeles on Monday. Each of the four counts in the indictment carries a maximum 15-year prison term.
Prosecutors said the indictment did not charge the mosques. They added that the defendants were charged “based on their provision of material support to terrorism, not on their religious beliefs or teachings.”
The Muslim Communities Association of South Florida announced that Hafiz Khan had been suspended indefinitely from his mosque.
“Our organisations, together through the Coalition of South Florida Muslim Organizations, have been working with the U.S. attorney's office and the Miami FBI office,” the association said in a statement released on Saturday afternoon, “and appreciate the efforts of law enforcement to root out potential sources and supporters of terrorism.”
The charges of supporting the Pakistani Taliban but not actually carrying out operations are the most common types of terrorism prosecutions that U.S. authorities have pursued since the Sept. 11 attacks. The Pakistani Taliban is closely allied with the al-Qaeda and is responsible for attacks against Pakistani police and military targets in recent years. The indictment comes at a tense moment in relations between the U.S. and Pakistan after Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by Navy SEALs on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Flagler Mosque is a modest house in a working-class Cuban neighbourhood. Before dawn on Saturday, two dozen FBI agents arrived at the mosque, blocking streets and sidewalks. Shortly after 6 a.m., a rap on the mosque door by agents interrupted morning prayers, according to Sama Nassirnia, who was inside praying when the agents arrived. The agents waited until the prayers ended before entering the mosque, after removing their shoes, to arrest the imam, he said. “They were not respectful,” Nassirnia said. About the elderly imam, he said, “He's a pious man. This is the most peaceful man there is.”
Another of the imam's sons, Ikram Khan, who is a cab driver, angrily left the mosque early on Saturday evening and called the arrests “ridiculous.”
“They can do anything they want in America,” he said. “They want to scare more people.” He said his father had sent money to a madrassa in Pakistan for charitable purposes only. “It only does good things for people,” he said, “and it only does the right thing.”
Neighbours of the mosque said they heard the call to prayer every Friday. “We saw the older man all the time but they are quiet,” said a neighbour, Alina Lahens. — New York Times News Service
(Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from Miami, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.)
