Pakistani children play in front of a house where police reportedly arrested five Americans in Sargodha, Pakistan, on Dec. 10, 2009
New details emerging about the detention of five U.S. nationals in Pakistan suggest that officials believe the men had hoped to receive training at a jihadist camp and then launch attacks against U.S. forces.
Usman Anwar, chief of police in Sargodha, the town where the five men were apprehended, says the men told interrogators they were there "for jihad" and that they were planning to launch "jihad against the U.S. infidel forces, wherever they are."
The men, all from the Washington, D.C., area, have not been formally charged with a crime. Pakistani police are continuing to question them. Anwar tells TIME that the FBI and U.S. embassy officials have met with the men.
In Washington, FBI field office spokeswoman Katherine Schweit was not at liberty to discuss the matter because it is under investigation. "We are working with Pakistan authorities to determine their identities and the nature of their business there," she said in a statement. In Islamabad, a spokesman said the U.S. embassy was still awaiting details from Pakistani authorities.
Pakistani officials say that following a tip-off by the FBI, they began tracking the five men as soon as they landed in Karachi in late November. They then allegedly traveled to the city of Hyderabad and finally to Sargodha, 120 miles south of Islamabad. "We wanted to see who they were meeting, whether it was Taliban or Lashkar or Jaish," says an official who asked not to be named. (Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad are among several terrorist groups active in Punjab province.)
The men were allegedly apprehended in a house belonging to a man connected to Jaish-e-Muhammad. Although technically banned in Pakistan, the group remains active. It has been linked to the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl and several assassination attempts on Pakistan's former ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.
Some reports have claimed that the father of one of the five men was a Jaish member. Anwar says they made contact with the militant group "through YouTube and electronic mail."
The police chief says that when the men were picked up by the police, they had "computers, laptops, lots of data and maps of different areas of Pakistan."
— With reporting by Omar Waraich and Aryn Baker / Islamabad