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US arrested 237 Muslim immigrants before election

NEW YORK: US Immigration and Custom Enforcement Chief Michael Garcia confirmed on Saturday that several hundred immigrants, mostly of Muslim and Pakistani origin, were arrested before the US presidential elections.

He said that 237 immigrants were arrested in October and were questioned for possible terrorist links. None were found, he added.

Among them, Mr Garcia said, was a 23-year-old Pakistani oil tanker driver who had entered the United States through Mexico and had issued false statements to get legal status to stay in the country.

The immigration chief said that a terrorist attack against the US could not be ruled out, especially since the presidential swearing in ceremony and the Super Bowl were yet to take place.

On the same day, a New York judge ordered 39-year-old Syrian-American doctor Hasan Faraj, who had migrated from Bosnia to the US in 1993 and made false statements to get American citizenship, be put under house arrest. He was charged with helping Al Qaeda suspect Amir Abdur Razzaq, a close aide to Osama Bin Laden.

The prosecution said that the FBI had found blueprints of Washington DC overpasses at his home. Dr Faraj denied charges of conspiracy to terrorism, saying that the blueprints belonged to his brother, a civil engineering lecturer at a Washington university. nni

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