http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/nyregion/08suicide.html? Girl Called Would-Be Bomber Was Drawn to Islam By NINA BERNSTEIN Published: April 8, 2005 For years, the father said, he watched as his daughter, now 16, became more and more drawn to the family's Muslim religion. At 14, she began wearing a full-length veil and teaching religion classes at mosques around the city. A year ago, she withdrew from her Manhattan high school because, a school official said, she felt uncomfortable with typical teenage banter. She told her family she wanted to go to an Islamic all-girls school, and when they could not afford to send her, she chose to study at home. Advertisement The father, a Bangladeshi watch salesman who describes himself as far more devoted to American education than to prayer after 13 years as an immigrant illegally in the United States, said he pushed for his daughter to return to public school. Then last fall, the daughter he also describes as loving Bollywood soap operas and shopping with girlfriends startled him and her mother by seeking their approval to marry a young American Muslim man they had never met and whom she barely knew. The father refused the marriage overtures, which were made by the young man's father in a call from Michigan. A few months later, when the teenager stayed out overnight for the first time, the father, fearing an elopement, went to the police for help. It is a decision he regrets deeply. His daughter and another 16-year-old girl are now described by the government as would-be suicide bombers and are being held in a detention center for illegal immigrants in Pennsylvania. He is sure that his visit to the police set off the F.B.I. investigation that led to a chilling assertion, in a government document, that the girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." Family and friends call that absurd. The document, provided to The New York Times by a federal agent on Wednesday, did not describe the nature of the evidence. Yesterday, after repeated inquiries, officials from several agencies involved in the investigation, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department, would not comment on the case. Little is known about the second 16-year-old. The mother of the Bangladeshi girl, conveying her daughter's account, said the two girls met for the first time at 26 Federal Plaza after her daughter's arrest. But when the other girl, a Guinean who was facing deportation with her family, noticed her daughter's veil, she gave her a traditional Muslim greeting, and federal agents seemed to think they were friends. The second girl ended up in the Pennsylvania detention center, too. The only other information about the second girl, included in the government document, is that she and her parents have been living in the United States illegally since shortly after her birth, that she has four siblings, all United States citizens, and that her father had been arrested on immigration violations. Neither girl's name is being published because they are minors who have not been charged with any crime. A bond hearing in the Bangladeshi girl's case is to be held this morning in York, Pa., but the government has asked that it be closed, based on an affidavit filed by a counterterrorism supervisor in the F.B.I.'s New York office. The case underscores the difficulties faced by anyone who is charged only with civil immigration violations, but is in fact being held in a counterterrorism investigation, lawyers said. There are no firm time limits on immigration detention, so the burden is on the girls to prove that they are not potential suicide bombers, rather than on the government to prove they are. Indeed, the evidence is withheld from the girls and anyone who represents them under a "protective order" that F.B.I. investigators obtained from the immigration court, according to an April 1 motion to continue the secrecy, signed by Jeffrey T. Bubier, assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security in Philadelphia. "The F.B.I. has an important and substantial interest in safeguarding the information," Mr. Bubier's motion stated, "to protect national security law and enforcement interests." To release it, he said, "places investigative strategies and methods at substantial risk." The girls have no right to a court-appointed lawyer, and according to the government document that described the Guinean girl, her family had not retained one. Advertisement The Bangladeshi girl's father, who sells cheap watches wholesale and, he said, earns less than $16,000 a year, hired a New York immigration lawyer for $2,500. But the lawyer declined to attend her first hearing, according to a motion he filed seeking to handle the matter "telephonically," because of "time constraints." They are seeking another lawyer. In an interview at the Islamic Center of North America in Queens, the Bangladeshi girl's mother said that her daughter had experienced problems over her religion at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, which led to her enrollment in a Georgia-based correspondence course. She said the girl came home crying from school because of upsetting remarks, some directed at her Islamic dress. But the parent coordinator at the school, Karen Hundley, said that students at the school come from many ethnic and religious backgrounds and get along very well. "She didn't mingle," Ms. Hundley said, adding that the school tried to accommodate her religious principles. When she needed a photo ID, for example, the parent coordinator took the picture without a man in the room. But though the girl earned many good grades, according to a transcript provided by her parents, she could not seem to bear the give-and-take of a coeducational high school, Ms. Hundley said. She cited an incident in which the teenager stayed home for days last year after hearing two girls discussing a boyfriend. "A lot of things other kids did offended her sense of religion," Ms. Hundley said, citing jokes about movies and an ethics class that mentioned condoms. But she said that nothing about the girl's behavior or comments was threatening. A 17-year-old girl who spoke on condition that she be identified only by her first name, Shahela, said she, too, had opted for home schooling and was "very close" to the Bangladeshi girl. She called the notion that her friend could be recruited as a suicide bomber a terrible mistake. Their three-year friendship, she said, revolved around Islam, prompting both to learn Arabic and to teach classes on Islam to young women at two mosques. "We talked about what was going on in Palestine, suicide bombings, and I know she's completely against it," she said. To the mother of the Bangladeshi girl, the whole sequence of events seems unreal. She said she did not realize when investigators showed up at home on March 4 that they were F.B.I. agents, because they claimed they were from a youth center that helped families get along and were simply following up the father's complaint to the police. She sent the female agent upstairs to talk with her daughter. Twenty days later, immigration agents arrived at dawn and took the teenager away. The mother recalled how her daughter had played with her 4-month-old brother and helped care for her other siblings, 14 and 11. Her daughter, she said, told her during a brief detention visit that F.B.I. interrogators had warned that unless she confessed to terrorist ties, her two youngest siblings, who are American citizens, would be placed in foster care and her parents sent back to Bangladesh without them. "I don't want to live here anymore," the mother said. "I always thought that this country is better for my children, but now ..." She broke off and began sobbing. "She's just 16," she cried. "I just want my daughter. Please, can you help me?" Andrea Elliott and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting for this article. A Ma-Salama Prince oF Destiny http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Revival-Of-Muslim-Mind/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Would you Help a Child in need? It is easier than you think. 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Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125) {And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33) The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim] The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." 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