March 27, 2002	Wednesday	Muharram 12, 1423

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NEW YORK, March 26: United States immigration officials have arrested, and are seeking to deport a young Pakistani immigrant who, they say, plotted last spring to blow up power plants and other sites in south Florida, law enforcing officials told New York Times.

They told the newspaper that the Immigration and Naturalization Service, supported by the police in Florida, had arrested an immigrant Imran Mandhai, 19, about a month ago when he was returning to his apartment from an Islamic centre in Hollywood, Fla.

The officials said Mr Mandhai, who lives in Hollywood with his parents, conspired last March and April with others, whom they declined to identify, to acquire guns and explosives for a Jihad against the US.

One official told the paper that nothing indicated that Mr Mandhai or his purported plot was connected to Osama bin Laden’s Qaeda or the Sept 11 attacks. Investigators had spent months following Mr Mandhai’s movements and his associates before his arrest, he said.

It is unclear whether he has obtained such weapons or not. Patricia Mancha, the immigration service spokeswoman in Miami, confirmed that Mr Mandhai was in custody, but she would not say when he was arrested or whether the agency would start deportation proceedings, the paper said.

Imran’s father, Muhammad Farooq Mandhai, an accountant, in an interview with the New York Times said that his son had done nothing wrong. He said Imran was in the Krome Detention Centre in Miami, where illegal immigrants are often held. He described his son as an excellent student who was in his second year in computer science at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale.

The law enforcing officials and associates of the accused painted a more ominous portrait of him. The local police and other law enforcing officials said Mr Mandhai became disenchanted with American life, and was attracted to militant Islamic politics soon after he arrived in the United States in April 1998.

Last spring, the officials said, a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) informer reported that Mr Mandhai was trying to organize a Jihad in south Florida to bomb electrical power stations and other sites. Mr Mandhai, they said, told some associates that he had received training from a man he identified only as “the marine” on how to make bombs.

US officials asserted that last April, Mr Mandhai discussed the importance of Jihad with seven Arab men, whom they refused to identify, at a meeting in neighbouring Miramar. That month, they said, he also tried to buy an AK-47 assault rifle at a gun show in Fort Lauderdale for $300, but his credit card was rejected.

One of the Mandhai’s targets was a large Florida power and light plant near Fort Lauderdale Airport, and that he had planned to bomb it on April 27, 2001, the officials said. They declined to say why the plot failed.

It is not known whether Mr Mandhai succeeded in making a bomb or whether he even bought components for one.

FBI officials in Washington suggested that the Justice Department might still bring charges against Mr Mandhai or others, but officials in Florida said the case had been turned over to the immigration agency after Justice Department lawyers declined to prosecute Mr Mandhai because of “technical” problems with the case.