WASHINGTON, Sept 23: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested six more suspects – all of Pakistani origin – from Maryland as part of its ongoing sting operation against money laundering.
US officials said that only two of the 11 suspects arrested in Maryland on Thursday were naturalized US citizens; the rest were illegal immigrants from Pakistan.
On Thursday, US federal officials indicted 39 people, some of them Pakistani operators of convenience stores in Eastern Shore communities, with a host of charges.
One of the defendants, Saifullah Ranjha was also charged with attempting to finance Al Qaeda. Asked to comment on these arrests, Pakistan’s Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani said that he did not know details of this particular case but similar cases in the past showed that “American officials were often too zealous.”
The charges brought against the suspects, he said, were often difficult to prove and in many cases the suspects were either released or offered plea bargains.
Officials in Spain said on Saturday that they had arrested two Pakistanis from Madrid and Barcelona, acting on tips they received from the FBI. Police identified the suspects, Anar Muhammad Shan and Mehmood Sandhu, as members of a terrorist organisation who allegedly collaborated with accomplices in the United States to transfer money to alleged Al Qaeda men in Pakistan.
The FBI, however, has conceded that no money was actually transferred to any terrorist outfit or criminals.
The FBI worked on this operation for four years, planting a mole among the suspects who pretended to be a US immigration official and promised to help them get permits for working in the United States.
He also gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars and asked them to transfer the money to drug smugglers in Pakistan, Europe and Australia if they wanted him to arrange green cards for them.
The mole also asked one of the suspects, Ranjha, to send money to Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.
A total of 45 people have been arrested in these string operations, including 16 from Maryland.
Six suspects arrested since Thursday are not mentioned in the original list of 39 men indicted earlier this week.
Meanwhile, the FBI has identified some more suspects arrested in Maryland. They include Mohammad Gujjar, Mohammad Ijaz, Javed Iqbal, Aqeel Khalid and Zakir Mahmood, all of Snow Hill; another Javed Iqbal, Mohammad Razzaq Butt and Saeed Ahmed, of Salisbury; and Mohammad Chaudhry of Parsonsburg and Mohammad Ashraf of Princess Anne county. One of these suspects -- Upendrakumar Somabhai Patel of Parsonsburg – is from India.
Gujjar, Ijaz, Iqbal I and Ahmed, along with other members of the store they owned, Mohammad Akhtar of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Mohammad Asif of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were all charged jointly on racketeering and can face up to 20 years if convicted. A court date has not been set.
