SAN FRANCISCO, June 10: A Californian accused of lying about his son’s links to a Pakistani Al Qaeda training camp was unfairly tarred by talk of terrorism even though charged with a lesser crime, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Federal officials announced on Wednesday the arrest of Pakistani-American Umer Hayat, 45, and his American-born son Hamid, 23, of Lodi, a community 60kms south of California’s capital Sacramento. Both were charged with lying to authorities when the son admitted to attending the training camp.
Keith Slotter, the agent in charge of the Sacramento FBI office, told reporters the investigation had shown links to Al Qaeda by ‘ individuals who have received terrorist training abroad with the specific intent to initiate a terrorist attack in the United States and to harm Americans and our institutions’.
Umer Hayat’s lawyer Johnny Griffin disagreed. “If the government truly had ... sufficient credible evidence that these men were terrorists or engaged in terrorist activity or conduct or supported a terrorist organization, they would have indicted on those charges,” he said in an interview.
“Instead they felt they only had sufficient credible evidence of false statements or making a false statement, so they indicted on that and threw in all this other inflammatory language in the affidavit.”
The US government even released two versions of the affidavit detailing the charges, one sent to journalists and another slightly shorter document filed in federal court.
“If they didn’t have enough to file the charges, in my view they should not say anything,” Griffin told Reuters.
“And then to find out there is more they said outside of this affidavit — why are they saying these things? Is it to taint the public, is it to paint these men as terrorists?”
“That’s not the way it is supposed to work here.”
The United States has announced a series of high-profile terrorism cases in the heightened security environment after Sept 11, 2001, although many cases later fizzled out.
Griffin said the case against Umer Hayat may also fade, and said the criminal complaint misrepresented what he told officials. “It didn’t take place the way the government is setting forth,” he said. “It didn’t convey the meaning that the government is attaching to it and in some cases, certain words were not used.” —Reuters