Lodi imam admits calling for attacks on Americans

A Muslim cleric from Lodi, one of five members of the Pakistani community in the San Joaquin County city arrested by federal authorities this month, told an immigration judge Friday that he made anti-American speeches to crowds in Pakistan in the first months of the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.

A bail hearing in San Francisco for Shabbir Ahmed, facing deportation for allegedly overstaying his visa, provided a forum for the government to counter his supporters' claims that Ahmed is a peaceful clergyman victimized by anti- Islamic hysteria.

As the imam of a mosque in the capital city of Islamabad in late 2001, "you encouraged people in Pakistan at least five times to go to Afghanistan and kill Americans,'' Paul Nishiie, assistant general counsel of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Ahmed.

The witness, speaking through an interpreter, at first denied the accusation, then said he urged his audiences to "pressure Americans that they should stop the bombing,'' and finally confirmed that he told the FBI he had encouraged attacks on American troops.

Asked repeatedly whether he had also urged Pakistanis to defend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Ahmed eventually said, "Being emotional, I may have said it or I may not have said it.''

Ahmed also testified that he has never supported terrorism and that he now regrets his 2001 speeches, and has since made speeches defending the United States to Muslim audiences.

Immigration Judge Anthony Murry delayed further proceedings until Aug. 2 for Ahmed and two other Lodi men, leaving all three in jail.

In Sacramento, a federal judge declined to order prosecutors to produce intelligence that led authorities to place a Lodi man suspected of attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan on the "no fly" list, saying he did not want defense lawyers to "muck around in national security."

The man, Hamid Hayat, and his father, Umer Hayat, both U.S. citizens, are charged with making false statements to federal agents. They are accused of denying, then admitting, that Hamid Hayat attended an al Qaeda-sponsored training camp in Pakistan. They are not charged with plotting or taking part in terrorist activity.

Both have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail. Their lawyers, Johnny Griffin III and Wazhma Mojaddidi, have denied that Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp and suggested their comments in FBI interviews were the product of a misunderstanding.

The two were arrested June 3 after Hamid Hayat returned from Pakistan, where he had been living for the past two years. Also arrested were Ahmed, 42; another Lodi religious leader, Muhammad Adil Khan, and Khan's 19-year-old son, Muhammad Hassan Adil Khan. Those three are not charged with any crimes but are accused of immigration violations that could lead to deportation.

At the Hayats' hearing Friday, U.S. District Judge Peter Nowinski ordered the government to provide defense lawyers with videotapes of the two men's interrogations. He barred the lawyers from disclosing the material to anyone outside the case. The judge scheduled another hearing Monday to consider defense requests for more information after they had reviewed the initial government material.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Brown said that cases involving national security require special procedures to deal with classified information, but that the defense would get all the evidence it needs.

At the San Francisco immigration hearing, Ahmed testified that he entered the United States in January 2002 with a religious visa, served as imam for the Lodi Muslim Mosque, opened the mosque to local Christians and Jews as part of an interfaith organization, and applied for an extension of his visa a month before it was due to expire last November.

Nishiie, the government lawyer, pressed Ahmed about his 11 years at a Pakistani madrassa, or religious school, called Jamia Farooqia, where many of the students went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation and later on behalf of the fundamentalist Taliban. During one of bin Laden's denunciations of America, Nishiie said, he "thanked the scholars at Jamia Farooqia'' for their help.

Ahmed said he was too occupied with his studies to have any interest in going to Afghanistan. But he acknowledged that his fellow Lodi cleric, Khan --

formerly the general secretary of Jamia Farooqia -- was, for a time, a close friend of a Taliban leader.