MIAMI — Six people, including two imams at South Florida mosques, have been indicted on federal charges of providing financial support and encouraging violence by the Pakistani Taliban, the United States attorney here announced Saturday.
The indictment, which was handed up on Thursday, charged Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, the imam at the Miami Mosque (also known as the Flagler Mosque), the oldest mosque in Miami. The indictment also charged two of the imam’s sons: Izhar Khan, 24, the imam at the Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in nearby Margate, Fla.; and Irfan Khan, 37, of North Lauderdale, Fla. All three men are American citizens who are originally from Pakistan, the authorities said.
The four-count indictment charges the Khans, and three others living in Pakistan, with conspiring to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas, as well as with conspiring to provide about $45,000 in financial support to the Pakistani Taliban from 2008 to 2010.
“Despite being an imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace,” Wilfredo A. Ferrer, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “Instead, as today’s charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming.”
Hafiz and Izhar Khan are scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami on Monday afternoon. Irfan Khan will be arraigned in Los Angeles on Monday. Each of the four counts in the indictment carries a maximum 15-year prison term.
Prosecutors said the indictment did not charge the mosques. They added that the defendants were charged “based on their provision of material support to terrorism, not on their religious beliefs or teachings.”
The Muslim Communities Association of South Florida announced that Hafiz Khan had been suspended indefinitely from his mosque.
“Our organizations, together through the Coalition of South Florida Muslim Organizations, has been working with the U.S. attorney’s office and the Miami F.B.I. office,” the association said in a statement released Saturday afternoon, “and appreciate the efforts of law enforcement to root out potential sources and supporters of terrorism.”
“We stand together with the U.S. attorney, Wilfredo Ferrer, and the men and women of the F.B.I., and have been and will be cooperating with law enforcement to our fullest ability,” the Muslim association added.
The charges of supporting the Pakistani Taliban but not actually carrying out operations are the most common types of terrorism prosecutions that American authorities have pursued since the Sept. 11 attacks. Of the 50 top terrorism cases since 9/11, about 70 percent have involved financing or other support to terrorist groups, according to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.
The Pakistani Taliban is closely allied with Al Qaeda and is responsible for attacks against Pakistani police and military targets in recent years. Pakistani authorities believe that a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan on Friday that killed more than 80 cadets from a government paramilitary force.
The indictment comes at a tense moment in relations between the United States and Pakistan after Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by the Navy Seals on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
On Saturday, the Pakistani Parliament condemned the raid as a “unilateral action” and “a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” and demanded a formal review of the country’s relationship with the United States.
F.B.I. agents arrested Hafiz Khan and his son Izhar in South Florida on Saturday, the authorities said. Irfan Khan was arrested in Los Angeles, they said.
Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from Miami, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
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