Miami Imams: No bail for young Muslim cleric accused of aiding Taliban

Judge cites flight risk and a potential threat to community safety.

MIAMI:

A federal judge in Miami denied bail on Tuesday to a young Muslim cleric arrested in May on charges of financing and supporting the Pakistani Taliban.

The judge cited flight risk and a potential threat to community safety in rejecting bail for Izhar Khan, 24, who has been charged along with his father and brother with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

The three Pakistan-born US citizens are among six charged in a US indictment with supporting acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming in Pakistan and elsewhere carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, which Washington calls a terrorist organization.

Judge Adalberto Jordan said although the evidence against the younger Khan, an imam at the Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in Margate, Florida, was not as strong as that against his father, Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, it was enough to justify detention pending a trial in which he faces up to 15 years in prison for each count against him.

Khan pleaded not guilty at his indictment last month and a trial date has not been set. “In general, the government has proffered intercepted conversations and financial records demonstrating that between 2008 and 2010 Khan assisted his father, Hafiz Khan, in collecting funds for, and transferring funds to, the Pakistani Taliban,” Jordan said in his order denying bail.

Jordan is weighing whether Khan’s older brother, 37-year-old Irfan Khan, should get bail. He has already rejected bail for the men’s father, who was also an imam at the Miami Mosque, known as the Flagler Mosque, at the time of his arrest.

The other three charged in the case, Ali Rehman, Alam Zeb and Amina Khan, were living in Pakistan when the indictment against them was handed down and are believed to be at large.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2011.