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| India-Pakistan |
| 15 Foreign Students Arrested |
| 2003-09-20 |
| Pakistani security officials detained 15 Southeast Asian Islamic students in Karachi yesterday, saying they had ties with militants and were involved in activities damaging to Pakistanâs interests. âThirteen of the suspects are Malaysian and two are Indonesian,â Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, chief of the crisis management cell of the Interior Ministry told Reuters. Guess who? âThey were arrested at a seminary in Karachi... for their involvement in undesirable activities aimed against the interests of Pakistan,â he said. He declined to give details but a senior official of the Federal Investigation Agency in Karachi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were arrested in raids on several seminaries, or madrasas. âWe arrested them on the request of their respective governments,â the official said. A senior intelligence officer, who also asked not to be identified, said the men were linked to militants but it was too early to say if they had ties with the Al-Qaeda network. Interrogators wanted to find out if they had been planning attacks, the officer said. They were in a madrasas in Pakistan, of course they were planning attacks. The only question is where. âOnce the interrogation is complete they will be deported to their respective countries,â Cheema said. âThe process will take a week or so.â Sounds long and painful. Militants from Southeast Asia, including some from Indonesia, the worldâs most populous Muslim country, were trained at Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before the US-led invasion of that country in late 2001. Some of them went home and joined the Jemaah Islamiah group, which was responsible for the bomb attacks on the Indonesian resort island of Bali last October that killed more than 200 people. Cheema said Malaysia and Indonesia had withdrawn permission for the 15 students to stay on in Pakistan. âWe are grateful to both the Malaysian and Indonesian governments for their cooperation,â he said. Interesting development. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Heh, if that number of students were arrested here in the U.S., there'd be a whole lotta screaming going on right about now by the usual whiners.... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-9-20 7:40:11 PM |
| #3 Sorry, for a minute there I thought that Girls Gone Wild might have been filming in Pakistan. Just some Koran-memorizers running amuk. Tuning back out... |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-20 7:25:41 PM |
| #2 Man, how "militant" do you have to be to get arrested in |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-9-20 7:06:45 PM |
| #1 As we used to say in college: "This is not going to look good on a resume!" |
| Posted by: JDB 2003-9-20 6:09:30 PM |