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Muslim cleric linked to terror probe to be deported
- Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, July 15, 2005


(07-15) 15:56 PDT Lodi (SF Chronicle) -- A Muslim cleric with ties to Lodi men caught up in an FBI terrorism investigation agreed today to be deported along with his son rather than fight government immigration charges.

Mohammad Adil Khan, 47, and his son, Mohammad Hassan Adil, 19, had been accused of overstaying their visas and of coming to the United States under false pretenses.

Both men admitted to visa violations during a court proceeding in San Francisco today. In exchange, the government set aside allegations that Adil Khan lied when he came to the United States and that he had falsely claimed to be working as a Muslim imam in Lodi.

Adil Khan, smiling and appearing jovial as he was led out of the courtroom, has heart problems and wants to go back to Pakistan with his sons, daughter and wife, his attorney Saad Ahmad said.

“My clients are leaving the country,� Ahmad said. “They don’t want to aggravate the situation in Lodi. They have to decided to let this thing pass by.’’

He called his client a moderate who had come to the United States to spread peace, not terror. “I just believe my clients were in the wrong place at the wrong time,’’ he said.

Another Islamic cleric embroiled in the FBI probe, Shabbir Ahmed, is fighting deportation. Federal authorities said little about the deal that allowed the men to leave, other than a statement by San Francisco branch chief counsel Ronald Le Fevre of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“ICE will not allow foreign nationals to use the United States as a haven for activities that potentially put our nation or other nations at risk,’’ Le Fevre said.

Khan entered the United States in April 2001 as a “special immigrant religious worker,� on a nonimmigrant R-1 visa, to perform religious services at the Lodi Muslim Mosque. He later began fund-raising for a school named for the Jamia Farooqia religious university in Pakistan where he had studied and where his father had been a leader.

Adil Khan, his son and Ahmed were all arrested on immigration charges last month. The Farooqia Islamic Center’s school in Lodi is still in the planning stages.

Adil Khan and Ahmed have been linked to a father and son from Lodi, 47-year-old Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat, 22, who are in custody in Sacramento on charges of lying to FBI agents.

The FBI said in a court affidavit in June that Hamid Hayat had admitted to having attended a “jihadist training camp in Pakistan for approximately six months� more than a year ago. Hamid told the FBI “that he and others at the camp were being trained on how to kill Americans,� the affidavit said.

Umer Hayat is accused of initially denying knowing that his son had attended the camp in Pakistan. The Hayats are not charged with plotting or taking part in terrorist activity.

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

Arslan Hayat, Hamid Hayat’s 16-year-old brother, and others have received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Sacramento.

“The government has indicated to me that my client is not a target of this investigation,� his attorney, Joseph Wiseman, said Friday. “The scope of the questions I do not know. I think the government is trying to develop a material assistance case against somebody, if I had to guess.�

The government has declined to say what connection, if any, exists between the Hayats and the three detainees other than the fact that they all live in Lodi.

However, the FBI has been questioning other people associated with the Farooqia Islamic Center where, in addition to Adil Khan being a fund-raiser, Ahmed is an administrator.

Adil Khan and Ahmed were also former imams at the Lodi Muslim Mosque, where Umer and Hamid Hayat worshiped. At a hearing June 24, Ahmed admitted to an immigration judge that he had made anti-American speeches to crowds in Pakistan in the months after the United States invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 2001.

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 on the witness stand.

Ahmed said he had 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 U.S. troops.

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

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

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.

Government lawyers pointed out that the Pakistani madrassa, or religious school, where Ahmed taught for 11 years, Jamia Farooqia, had produced a number of students who went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation and later on behalf of the fundamentalist Taliban.

Ahmed said he was too preoccupied with his studies to have any interest in going to Afghanistan. But he acknowledged that his fellow Lodi cleric Khan â€â€