Lashkar egg on General146;s US face

When Federal authorities announced the arrest of at least seven Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists from Virginia, it came as a huge embarrassment fo...

When Federal authorities announced the arrest of at least seven Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists from Virginia, it came as a huge embarrassment for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who was visiting Los Angeles on Friday.

The arrest of the members of the Pakistan-based outfit, whose primary aim is to spread terror in Kashmir, is likely to put more pressure on the Pakistan President to crack down on the organisation.

The FBI arrested at least seven suspects of a terror cell based in Virginia 8212; all of them belonging to Lashkar-e-Toiba and some of them Pakistanis 8212; training and plotting to launch attacks in Kashmir, Chechnya and the Philippines.

Musharraf said he had just learned about the arrests. 8216;8216;We need to see who they are, where they were trained, and how they were organised,8217;8217; he said.

In all, authorities charged 11 suspects 8212; nine of them US citizens 8212; with 42 criminal counts in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, including 8216;8216;conspiracy to train for and participate in a violent jihad.8217;8217;

Authorities made no allegations that the men were planning attacks in the US, although one of the suspects had a photograph downloaded from the Internet of FBI headquarters in Washington.

Three of the men were accused of using their US military backgrounds to help train some of the other conspirators. 8216;8216;When individuals meet in the shadows of our nation8217;s capital to prepare for violent jihad, we will take action,8217;8217; said acting Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray.

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In the indictments unsealed Friday, the Justice Department named the following defendants: Randall Todd Royer, 30; Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi, a Yemeni national and non-resident alien; Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31; Yong Ki Kwon, 27, a naturalized US citizen born in Korea; Mohammed Aatique, 30, a Pakistani national and US visa holder; Seifullah Chapman, 30; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35; Donald Thomas Surratt, 30; Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, 29; Khwaja Hasan, 27, a naturalized US citizen born in Pakistan; and Sabri Benkhala, 28. Chapman, Hasan and Benkhala were believed to be in Saudi Arabia.

US authorities said one of them was arrested in Saudi Arabia recently by Saudi officials investigating the May 12 bombings in Riyadh. US Attorney Paul J. McNulty said that the suspects, almost all of them based in Virginia, were told after the Sept. 11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon 8216;8216;that it was time to engage in violent jihad, that it was appropriate for these members to take up arms in jihad.8217;8217; LAT-WP