Detained Americans Barred From Deportation

On Monday the Lahore court in Pakistan barred the deportation of 5 Americans until judges review the case. A Taliban recruiter first made contact with the 5 young men after one of them " Ahmed Abdullah Minn" posted comments on YouTube videos praising attacks on American troops. 


These YouTube postings were a regular feature which led the Taliban recruiter Saifullah to contact Minni. 


"On Monday, the Lahore High Court barred the government from deporting the five Americans until judges review the case. The court gave the Punjab authorities until December 17 to provide a detailed report on the arrests."


The way Minni and the terrorist shared messages was to leave draft messages on a shared yahoo account. They reason that this would reduce the chances of an intercept by authorities. 


"The men traveled overseas without telling their families, triggering an international manhunt after concerned relatives contacted the FBI. The five – Ramy Zamzam, 22; Ahmad Minni, 20; Umar Chaudhry, 24; Waqar Khan, 22; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18 – were transferred Saturday from Sargodha to Lahore, where the FBI questioned them."


"It is unclear how widespread this ‘online recruitment’ is, but Evan Kohlmann, a senior analyst with a private group that monitors extremist websites, has been quoted as saying: “Increasingly, recruiters are taking less prominent roles in mosques and community centers because places like that are under scrutiny. So what these guys are doing is turning to the Internet.”


Where online recruiters go so do Terrorist recruiters. Its not just company recruiters whoa re able to find candidates online. Here we see a clear case on how terrorists can use social networks as a recruitment tool. People who want to be found by terrorists  thrown themselves open for recruitment and end up getting contacted.

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Sociolatte