In the photograph from last November, Ramy Zamzam, 22, is a proud first-year dental student in his new white jacket, framed by his beaming parents. A few weeks later, he and four American friends would disappear, resurfacing in Pakistan, accused by United States and Pakistani law enforcement officials of seeking to join the jihad against American forces in Afghanistan. At a time of new concern about radicalization of Muslims in the United States, Mr. Zamzam's story is a baffling tale and a tragedy for parents who from all appearances are loyal and law-abiding Muslim immigrants living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
In an interview on Friday, as the men's trial resumed in Pakistan, Mr. Zamzam's mother, Amal Khalifa, described a harrowing visit she and her husband made early this month to the eldest of her three children. The confident student, she said, the “multitasker' who had excelled as a student and community volunteer through high school and college, was shattered by four months in a Pakistani jail. “He cried and clung to me,' Ms. Khalifa said, choking up. “When I saw him like that, it broke my heart.'
By her account, Mr. Zamzam asked about his two younger brothers and denied that he had had any plans to join militants. “He said: ‘Mom, I love my country. I want to go back to my country. Why do the Pakistanis want to do this to us?' ' Ms. Khalifa said in the interview, at the Washington offices of the Council on American Islamic Relations, an advocacy group that has assisted the parents.
The Pakistani authorities have lodged terrorism charges against Mr. Zamzam and his four friends, all American citizens — Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Aman Hassan Yemer, Waqar Khan and Umer Farooq — alleging that the Americans sought to connect with militant groups and that they also plotted attacks against Pakistani targets. The men have denied the charges.
Their trial, which after a recess formally began on Saturday in a prison in the Pakistani city of Sargodha, opened with testimony presented by police officers, and the presentation of maps the men were allegedly carrying when they were arrested and print-outs of e-mail. A lawyer for the men, Hassan Katchela, said his clients had been “excited, neat and tidy,' during the session. The next hearing was set for April 27.
American law enforcement officials have said there is considerable evidence suggesting that the men had been radicalized and planned violence, notably a video Mr. Zamzam left behind that appeared to reflect his plans to join the jihad. Ms. Khalifa declined to discuss the video, which Mr. Zamzam left with a Virginia friend on a thumb drive. She said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked her not to speak publicly about its contents.
During the visit with his parents, she said, Mr. Zamzam, told them he and the other men disappeared two days after Thanksgiving to travel to Pakistan to attend Mr. Farooq's wedding. They chose not to tell their parents about their plans, Mr. Zamzam said, because they were afraid they would be forbidden from taking an expensive trip to a possibly dangerous place.
After they arrived, according to Mr. Zamzam, armed men, not wearing uniforms, burst into the house where they were staying and drove off with them. They were held for 36 hours without food or water and beaten constantly by interrogators who demanded that they admit to being terrorists, Mr. Zamzam told his parents. Pakistani officials have denied that the Americans were mistreated and disputed the wedding story.
Mr. Zamzam's family immigrated from Egypt in 1990, when he was 2 years old, after receiving residence status in the so-called green card lottery operated by the United States. Ms. Khalifa has worked as a secretary for the Navy and as a receptionist at a Washington condominium, she said; her husband, Said Zamzam, has worked in the financial aid office at Howard University and also as a receptionist at the same condominium.
The family was not especially religious, Ms. Khalifa said, rarely visiting the mosque except at Muslim holidays. For Ramy and his teenage friends at West Potomac High School, she said, the small neighborhood mosque was “a club.' “They'd order pizza, play computer games and play basketball in the parking lot,' she said.
A biology major on full scholarship to Howard University in Washington, he decided on a dental career and studied day and night the summer after his junior year for the Dental Admission Test. He rarely came home during his first semester at Howard's dental school last fall, but appeared to be his usual joking self when he came home for Thanksgiving week, she said. “I cooked 100 percent American food on Thanksgiving — turkey, mashed potatoes, corn,' she said.
The following Saturday, she said, he announced that he was going to go to a conference in Baltimore and needed two sets of clothes and a suitcase. She did not ask him what the conference was about. On Sunday evening, Ahmed Minni's younger brother appeared and said “the five boys have disappeared.' Ms. Khalifa did not believe it, and they called her son's cellphone. He answered and told them not to worry, he would be home soon. At 2 a.m. Monday, Mr. Minni's father, brother and two friends came to the house and told Ms. Khalifa and her husband that the young men were in Pakistan. She said she had not had a peaceful moment in the nightmarish four months since that night.