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Pakistan questions teenager US linked to militants
[Dawn] Pakistani authorities interrogated a teenager on Monday wanted in the United States on charges of financing and supporting the al Qaeda-linked Pak Taliban, local intelligence officials said.Alam Zeb, 19, was charged in Florida along with his mother and a family friend. He is the grandson of the imam of a Florida mosque who was placed in durance vile in the United States along with his two sons on Saturday on the same charges of creating a network that moved funds from the United States to Taliban supporters in Pakistain. "He (Zeb) is being interrogated by the security officials at one of their facilities," an intelligence official told Rooters. Zeb, his mother and a family friend all live in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... Valley in the northwest, where the army launched a major operation in 2009 to clear the area of al Qaeda-linked cut-thoats. The college student denied any links with the turbans. Zeb said his grandfather, Pak-born American Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, had sent money back to Pakistain only to help poor relatives rebuild their houses damaged in fighting in Swat between the army and Pak Taliban. Some money was used to renovate a religious school, Zeb said. Pak officials said they had not received any US request to help track down the three suspects in Pakistain. The charges were made public as US relations with Pakistain have become strained over the US raid that killed al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden ... who has made the transition back to dust... in Pakistain on May 2. His presence in a garrison town near Islamabad raised suspicions that Pak security agencies were aware of his hideout, where one of his widows said he lived for five years. Pakistain has welcomed his death as a big step against militancy but it is angry over "unilateral" US action it says has violated its illusory sovereignty. Posted by: Fred 2011-05-17 |
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