Educator and Interfaith Activist Among Those Detained in Lodi Terror Probe

June 11, 2005

Source: Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/11871438.htm

On June 11, 2005 the Mercury News reported, "the FBI alleges agents have been looking into the affairs of Mohammad Adil Khan -- an educator leading the fight to open a Muslim school in Lodi -- for years. In federal court papers, agents link him to an associate of his father's in Pakistan who signed a holy order with Osama bin Laden calling for followers to kill Americans. But none of these accusations matches up with the Khan friends across California say they have known for at least five years, since his arrival in the United States on a visitor's visa to launch the Farooqia Islamic Center on 18 acres in the Central Valley. They say he's an open-minded man leading the effort to ensure that the future Islamic school is a model of tolerance, as opposed to some of the madrasahs in Pakistan that many Lodi parents worry would turn their children into extreme Islamists. While the FBI continues to trace threads of a possible terrorist cell in Northern California, Khan, 47, is being held on a no-bond warrant in Santa Clara County's jail on an alleged immigration violation. He was swept up this week in a larger terror-related probe in which a Lodi father and son -- Umer Hayat, 47, and Hamid Hayat, 22, -- were arrested for allegedly lying to the FBI about the son's training to become a terrorist in Pakistan."