Dec. 13: Pakistani authorities are searching for an insurgent figure believed to have aided five Northern Virginia men who allegedly tried to join al Qaida, saying the case could help unravel a growing network of terrorist recruiters who scour the Internet for radicalised young men.
Investigators have identified the man, known as Saifullah, as a recruiter for the Pakistani Taliban and said he contacted one of the American men on YouTube, exchanged coded e-mails with the group, invited them to Pakistan and guided them once they arrived.
Experts said the case is especially troublesome because it apparently involved recruiting on YouTube, a Web site with mass appeal that is extremely difficult to monitor.
Pakistani officials have said that Saifullah first contacted one of the men, Ahmad A. Minni, on YouTube in August after Minni repeatedly praised YouTube videos showing attacks on US forces.
A Pakistani police official involved in the investigation said Saifullah and the men exchanged coded e-mails for months thereafter.
Pakistani investigators say they believe that Saifullah spent time in the US, because of his familiarity with American slang and geography. Officials said he was already wanted for his alleged role in an attack this year on the Sri Lankan cricket team as it visited Lahore for a tournament.
But the American men, all Muslims from the Alexandria area, failed to reach the remote tribal zone that is al Qaida’s home because the terrorist network’s commanders thought they were sent by the CIA to infiltrate al Qaida — and Saifullah could not convince them otherwise, a Pakistani intelligence official said on Saturday.
“They were regarded as a sting operation. That’s why they were rejected,” said the official.
The developments point to the dangers posed by an extensive and sophisticated network of online terrorist recruiters, but also its limitations. Investigators and terrorism experts say recruitment worldwide has become far more Web-based, with recruiters playing a critical role in identifying potential radicals and determining whether they can be trusted.
Yet Saifullah’s endorsement, secured through months of online contact with the five men, apparently did not carry much weight with Osama bin Laden’s organisation: it wanted someone who knew them better.
As a result, the five men wound up marooned in the eastern city of Sargodha, far from the terrorist haven in the forbidding mountains of northwest Pakistan that they were apparently trying to reach. Pakistani officials said the men were undeterred and kept trying to acquire the endorsements to gain access to al Qaida training camps — with the ultimate goal of fighting US troops in Afghanistan — when they were arrested.
The men, aged 18 to 24, travelled overseas without telling their families, triggering an international manhunt after concerned relatives contacted the FBI.
The five — Ramy Zamzam, 22; Minni, 20; Umar Chaudhry, 24; Waqar Khan, 22; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18 — were transferred on Saturday from Sargodha to Lahore, where they were questioned by the FBI.
