FIVE AMERICAN Muslims face 10 years hard labour in Pakistani jails after being convicted of plotting terror attacks.
The students, aged from 19 to 25, were found guilty yesterday of waging war against the state and funding a terrorist group.
Police said they had planned to travel to Afghanistan to join up with the Taliban and fight Nato forces.
However, their lawyer said they would appeal against the verdict handed down in one of Pakistan’s notoriously unreliable secret courts.
The men, all Muslims, were arrested in the northeastern city of Sargodha in December.
They had been reported missing from their homes in Virginia a month earlier, when relatives discovered a farewell video message depicting scenes of war and calling for action to defend Muslims around the world.
Khalid Farooq, the Pakistani father of one of the men, spoke of his shock at the sentencing.
“It is a matter of great disappointment, we were not expecting it,” he told reporters outside the prison in Sargodha where the trial was held.
The case is one of several involving alleged “home-grown” American Muslim militants linked to Pakistan.
And it comes soon after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalised American from Pakistan, pleaded guilty to the botched Times Square plot – another terrorist radicalised in the US.
The trial in Sargodha was conducted in a closed, anti-terrorism court under tight security. Reporters were not allowed near the prison.
Umar Farooq, Waqar Hussain, both of Pakistani descent, Rami Zamzam, from an Eqyptian family, Ahmad Abdullah Mini and Amman Hassan Yemer, who are both of Egyptian descent, had faced a maximum punishment of life in prison if convicted on all charges they faced.
The judge found them guilty of two charges but acquitted them of three other charges.
Hassan Katchela, their defence lawyer, said the men planned to launch an appeal.
“Our defence was very clear that these were students who were doing well in their studies and were involved in humanitarian work,” he said.
“These boys had watched reports of how the Afghan people were living – especially the orphans – and they came here to help.” He said they had brought their study notes with them to Pakistan and had planned to return to the US for exams.
Appeals against such convictions have a high success rate. Pakistan’s higher courts have a record of frequently overturning convictions in terrorism cases, throwing out evidence that has not been challenged in the secret trials.
Police officers said they had e-mail evidence that they had been in contact with militant groups, including the Pakistan Taliban. They also claimed the men were found with maps of Chasma Barrage in Punjab, an area close to a nuclear power facility.
The defence disputed the e-mail evidence, arguing that officers had to change their paperwork to make dates consistent with the timing of the arrests.
The men grew up a few streets apart in the Virginia town of Alexandria, close to Washington DC.
They said they had come to Pakistan for Farooq’s wedding in Sargodha and planned to travel to Afghanistan but said they planned to carry out “community work” – distributing medicine and financial aid.
They also claimed to have been tortured and framed.
A note written on toilet paper and hurled from a prison van as they arrived for a court hearing earlier this year, read: “Since our arrest the USA, the FBI and Pakistani police have tortured us. They are trying to set us up. We are innocent.
“They are trying to keep us from the public, media, our families and our lawyers. Help us.”