SAN FRANCISCO, June 11: Judge Peter A. Nowinski in Sacramento denied bail on Friday to Hamid Hayat, a Pakistani American, suspected of training at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp in Pakistan and planning attacks in the US. The judge ordered Hamid Hayat, 22, held without bail as both a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Hayat’s attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, reminded the judge that her client was born in Stockton, California, and has significant ties to the community of the city of Lodi. He lives there, she said, with his father, mother, brothers and sisters. She said he was charged only with lying to FBI agents, which is normally a bailable offence, and he has surrendered his passport.
Assistant US Attorney R. Steven Lapham, disputed Mojaddidi’s statement that Hayat has close ties to the community. The prosecutor said he has travelled to Pakistan a number of times in his 22 years. He said Hayat stopped going to school in this country after the sixth grade, and “has little chance of getting a job that would support him.”
Mojaddidi acknowledged that Hayat has a wife and an extended family in (Attock) Pakistan, and that the family recently built a new home there. She said the family travelled to Pakistan on one occasion to seek medical treatment for the mother.
Friday’s hearing was the latest development in a federal investigation that authorities said has been ongoing for an extended period into the Pakistani community in Lodi.
As a teenager, Hamid Hayat lived in Pakistan and attended a madressah, or religious training school in Rawalpindi that was operated by Umer Hayat’s father-in-law, according to an FBI affidavit. His father said that’s where he was drawn to jihadi training camps, the document said.
