Muslim Cleric Says He Spoke Against U.S.

A Muslim cleric arrested in Northern California admitted in court Friday that he gave several speeches in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks urging crowds in his native Pakistan to battle invading American troops in Afghanistan.

“I was trying to put pressure on the United States to stop the bombing,” said Shabbir Ahmed, who at the time of his arrest on immigration charges two weeks ago was serving as imam, or religious leader, of a mosque in Lodi, Calif.

Ahmed’s testimony in a San Francisco immigration court offered one of the first detailed glimpses inside the federal investigation centered on Lodi’s large Pakistani immigrant community that has resulted in the arrests of five men, including two local religious leaders.

According to the government, Ahmed first admitted delivering anti-American speeches after three days of questioning by FBI agents ending June 10.

In court Friday, government immigration attorney Paul Nishiie played a tape recording in which an FBI agent asked if he had incited crowds against Americans.

Ahmed responded on the tape that yes, he had made the speeches.

“Did you say that people should go and defend Osama bin Laden?” Nishiie asked.

“Being emotional,” Ahmed said through a court-supplied Urdu interpreter, “I may have said it or I may not have said it.”

In speeches delivered in October and November 2001, Ahmed said he called on the emotional crowds assembled outside an Islamabad mosque to oppose Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s policy supporting the United States war on terrorism.

Two months later, the 39-year-old Ahmed said he was living happily in California on a “religious worker” visa granted by U.S. authorities and had completely changed his mind about America.

Also on Friday, a Lodi father and son -- Umer Hayat, 47, and Hamid Hayat, 22 -- appeared in federal court in Sacramento, accused of lying to FBI agents. Government prosecutors agreed to give defense attorneys statements and videotapes of interrogations of the men, including an interview with the younger Hayat in Tokyo before he was allowed to return to California.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinsky dismissed the notion that the Hayats have been unfairly held without bail for a relatively minor case of making false statements and without any firm evidence of terrorist activities being presented. He called it a “serious false-statements case.”

“This is not someone who lied about a false fire alarm,” Nowinsky said. “This is about somebody who lied in a terrorism case.”

During questioning of Ahmed in San Francisco, federal attorneys used transcripts from hours of FBI interviews to probe Ahmed’s relationship with another of the arrested men, Muhammed Adil Khan, 47, also an imam living in Lodi. Ahmed and Khan both served as teachers in a Karachi, Pakistan, religious school, Madrassa Jamia Farooqia, founded by Khan’s father.

Of particular concern to government immigration attorney Nishiie were any links between Ahmed and Khan and the Harkat ul Mujahideen, a banned political party named by the United States in 2001 as an active terrorist organization.

Ahmed denied any connection to Harkat and said his friend and teacher Adil Khan’s connections date to the time when the political group was a U.S. ally fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

“All of that was back in the time of the Russians,” said Ahmed, who appeared handcuffed, wearing an orange Sacramento County Jail outfit, before immigration Judge Anthony Murry.

The hearing, in a small courtroom jammed with reporters and federal agents, was ostensibly to decide Ahmed’s immigration status. Despite the talk of terrorism links, the only charge against Ahmed, a native of the Pakistan Kashmir region, is that he overstayed his three-year visa.

“This case has nothing to do about immigration. If it were a simple visa case none of you would be here,” defense attorney Saad Ahmad told reporters outside the San Francisco federal administration building. “My client could leave the country anytime he wants, but he prefers to stay here and prove his innocence.”

Ahmad also represents Khan and Khan’s son, Mohammed Hassan Adil, 19. The three men were all arrested on immigration violations during the federal terrorism investigation.

After hearing several hours of testimony, Murry ordered Ahmed returned to custody and the three immigration cases consolidated. He set hearings for early August.

In Sacramento, defense attorneys said they were frustrated with a lack of information from the government, particularly on allegations that the Hayats are terrorists and why the younger Hayat was put on a “no-fly” list and then removed. They have requested all the information the government may have on the men from 40 agencies, which prosecutors said they were collecting.

“I want to know the basis for each and every allegation the government is making,” said Johnny Griffin III, attorney for the elder Hayat. “They put this out there.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. R. Steven Lapham said he would turn over all documents to defense counsel “unless issues of national security arise.”

He asked that the videotaped interrogations be kept secret because they contain “information of a sensitive nature to terrorist training camps.”

Nowinsky said he would decide Monday what additional information could be handed over to defense attorneys, but he would not hand over documents “just to muck around in national security information.” He ordered the defense team to keep all the information they collect secret, except for showing it to their private investigator, Jim Wedick, a former FBI special agent.

After being questioned by the magistrate, prosecutors also agreed to hand over the seized passports of family members of the Hayats. Defense attorneys said the family members needed the passports for identification purposes.

The Hayats have not waived their right to a speedy trial, which means the case could go to trial as soon as Aug. 29.

Nowinsky closed the hearing by saying there is “no time to waste.”

Times staff writers Tempest reported from San Francisco and Salladay from Sacramento.