Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, August 27, 2005
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/27/MNG0AEECHN1. DTL>
In the days after federal agents arrested five residents of Lodi in a terror investigation in June, a clean-cut young man who had befriended the suspects and had spent nights at their homes vanished.
He hasn't been seen in town since, and now members of Lodi's Muslim community suspect they know why: The man, who called himself Nasim Khan, was a government mole, they believe, an informer whose surreptitious tape recordings of one of the suspects are at the heart of the federal probe.
Community members said Khan, who is in his early 30s, sometimes spoke of "jihad" in what they now believe was an attempt to get others to express radical sentiments.
In his three years in Lodi, Khan -- who spoke fluent Pashto, Urdu and English -- forged deep ties in the Muslim community. He once lived in one of two apartments that overlook Lodi's mosque, helped set up a Web site for a Muslim school that was forming in the area and took the teenage son of one of the suspects to ride roller-coasters at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara.
"He got me -- he convinced me he was an average guy," said a 23-year- old member of the Lodi mosque, who like many other members spoke on condition that he not be identified because he is afraid of drawing FBI scrutiny. "I was thinking he was just somebody who was interested in religion."
Federal prosecutors last week revealed they had a "cooperating witness" in Lodi. Without naming him, they said he had recorded scores of conversations with Hamid Hayat, a 22-year-old man accused of lying when he denied participating in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. His father, 47-year- old Umer Hayat, is charged with lying about the same thing.
Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, earlier this month received 47 audiotapes made by the "witness" that go back as far as August 2002.
By all accounts, Hamid Hayat and the "witness" were close friends. Several members of Lodi's Muslim community now say that friend was Nasim Khan, and a relative of the Hayats said Hamid Hayat identified the "witness" as Khan after learning of the content of the recordings.
The "witness" appears to be critical to the case. Prosecutors are using him in an attempt to connect Hamid Hayat to terrorism, while defense attorneys and some community members -- who say he was an aggressive provocateur in conversations -- are trying to find out more about him. Whether he is a civilian informant or an undercover agent could affect what information the defense is entitled to receive.
Moreover, his actions provide a look at one of the ways the government has been searching out Islamic extremists since Sept. 11, 2001. Some experts say such surveillance is critical to the war on terror, while critics say it violates people's freedom to practice their religion.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Lapham, one of two prosecutors trying the Hayats in federal court in Sacramento, said the "witness" will testify at the trial of the father and son, which has been postponed until at least October. Lapham declined to comment further.
Karen Ernst, an FBI special agent who speaks for the agency's Sacramento office, said the bureau "does not confirm if someone is a source or not, particularly in an ongoing investigation."
Little is known about Khan's background, his connection to the government or how he became involved with Muslims in Lodi. Efforts by The Chronicle to reach him have been unsuccessful. An Oregon woman who shared a post office box with him said she did not know him, describing him as a friend of a friend who needed a place to receive mail. She declined to comment further.
Hamid Hayat, who like his father is a U.S. citizen, was arrested June 5 after returning on May 29 from a long trip to Pakistan. According to an FBI affidavit, Hamid and Umer Hayat first denied to federal agents that Hamid Hayat had attended an al Qaeda-sponsored training camp in Pakistan but later admitted it.
According to the affidavit, Hamid Hayat told agents he attended the camp for six months in 2003 and 2004, was trained how to "kill Americans" and chose to return to the United States to carry out an attack. Federal authorities have said they have no evidence of a specific plot.
Also detained were Lodi religious leaders Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammad Adil Khan, and Adil Khan's 19-year-old son, who were charged with violating their religious-worker visas. The government says Hamid Hayat was to receive mission orders to kill Americans from Ahmed and Adil Khan, who is not related to Nasim Khan.
Although they weren't charged with it, authorities said, the clerics came to Lodi to recruit potential terrorists and were acting on behalf of radicals in Pakistan. A lawyer for the clerics, who agreed to be deported to Pakistan rather than fight the immigration charges, said they had no connection to terrorism.
Mojaddidi said Hamid Hayat didn't go to a training camp in the first place.
The government portrays the "witness" in court filings as connecting Hamid Hayat to terror. According to an Aug. 19 court filing, Hamid Hayat "swore that he would go to jihad" in conversations recorded in March and April of 2003.
The filing alleges that Hamid Hayat, while on the phone from Pakistan in 2003, "advised the (witness) that he genuinely desired to attend a camp and strongly indicated in his final conversation with the (witness) that he had been accepted to 'training' and was going to attend the same after Ramadan in 2003."
The Hayats' attorneys say the "witness" was the aggressor in conversations, and some community members say he expressed an interest in "jihad." Mojaddidi said she expects that the tapes, when released in full, will not implicate her client in anything illegal.
Mojaddidi, who speaks Pashto -- the language primarily spoken on the recordings -- said the government is "only giving us the tapes that they may consider damaging" and has left out portions of conversations as well. "I can't understand the full context of the conversations," she said.
She added that although Hamid Hayat met with the "witness" at the Lodi mosque just days before his arrest, authorities "don't have anything where (Hamid Hayat) says, 'I went to a camp.' That's what the government has to prove."
The use of informants and undercover agents in American mosques is not unusual, according to experts and published reports.
An FBI informant named Khalid Ibrahim Mostafa was a key witness in an investigation of seven Portland residents accused in 2002 of conspiring to join the Taliban in Afghanistan and fight against U.S. troops after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. All but one pleaded guilty, and the seventh was killed by Pakistani troops in 2003, authorities said.
Mostafa, an Egyptian-born mechanic, became an informant to avoid being charged in an unrelated case, according to the Oregonian. The newspaper reported that Mostafa presented himself as a fanatical Taliban supporter to targets of the Portland probe. In an interview with the newspaper, Mostafa said he did his patriotic duty.
"When an informant goes in and talks about jihad, and that you will be at the hand of Muhammad, and rattles sabers and builds up the religious fervor, to me that's a form of entrapment -- but legally it's not," John Ransom, a Portland attorney who represented one of the defendants who pleaded guilty in that case, told The Chronicle.
He added that the Portland and Lodi cases, as well as others, "seem to be following a pattern."
Lodi residents who knew Nasim Khan said he arrived at least three years ago and before long had rented a second-floor unit at the Southwood Garden Apartments that was one of two overlooking the rear parking lot of the mosque, which is separated from the apartments by a cinder-block wall.
"We went up and talked to him in his apartment," said a former president of the Lodi mosque who is also named Nasim Khan -- a common Pakistani name - - but is not a relative. "He was new in the area, and we wanted to welcome him. We thought he rented an apartment close to the mosque to be close to the mosque."
After several months, the young man moved out of Lodi -- some say to Roseville (Placer County) -- but continued to worship at the mosque. Many community members say they thought it was odd that Khan would continue to spend time in Lodi even after moving away, but they did not think he was working for the government.
Khan said he was from the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan and had come to the United States as a teenager, community members said. He said he was an engineer or a specialist in thwarting computer hackers. He spoke three languages fluently. He was clean-shaven with slicked-back black hair, and he always tucked in his shirts.
"When I asked him where he came from, he said he was from Seattle and had trouble with his family," said a Lodi mosque member in his 30s who also spoke on condition of anonymity. "He said he was looking for a Muslim wife. He said he had money and wanted to own his own business (in Lodi)."
The mosque member said Khan once asked him "if I wanted to buy a store with him -- a gas station or a liquor store."
Community members and a relative of the Hayats say Khan got particularly close to the five men who were arrested in the investigation, spending the night at their homes and helping them with their computers.
He helped Adil Khan build a Web site for the school he and others were trying to start, the Farooqia Islamic Center, said the mosque member in his 30s. He said Nasim Khan took Adil Khan's younger son, Zubair, on many excursions, including to Paramount's Great America.
The same member said Nasim Khan fell out of favor with Adil Khan at some point, so he spent more time with Ahmed, who was the imam of the Lodi mosque. Nasim Khan and Ahmed socialized in Ahmed's home beside the mosque in the evening or went out to dinner.
On the night before the two clerics were arrested, said the member in his 30s, Nasim Khan threw a small dinner party at his apartment in the Sacramento area. Adil Khan didn't go, but his two sons and Ahmed did.
"That was the goodbye dinner," said the mosque member. "That's what I figure."
The 23-year-old mosque member said he saw Nasim Khan a few days after the arrests at a Sacramento mosque that was hosting a lecture on raising children. After the lecture, Khan approached him, shared a plate of meat and rice with him and talked about the federal terror probe.
"He said, 'We should all be on the same page -- we should have the same story,' " the 23-year-old said. "I said, 'I don't have anything to hide.' "
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