Report: NYC teens held on charges they planned suicide bombing
April 7, 2005, 2:54 AM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) _ Federal authorities reportedly arrested two teenage
girls on charges that they planned to become suicide bombers and posed
a threat to U.S. security.
The two girls, both 16 and from New York City, were arrested March 24
and were being held in a detention center in Leesport, Pa., The New
York Times reported Thursday, citing a government document provided by
a federal agent.
According to the document, the FBI found the girls posed "an imminent
threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that
they plan to be suicide bombers," the Times said.
The evidence was not described in the document.
Manny Van Pelt, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a
division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would confirm
only that two juveniles had been arrested on "administrative
immigration violations" and remained in ICE custody, the Times said.
The girls _ one from Bangladesh, one from Guinea _ were reportedly
living in the United States illegally.
Adam Carroll, a community activist with the Islamic Circle of North
America, told the Times one of the girls had been arrested after she
stopped attending public high school in September. Federal immigration
agents investigated her home and discovered an essay about suicide and
Islam on her computer, Carroll said.
The case seemed to be "an investigation that's gotten out of hand,
like a lot of other so-called terror investigations," Caroll told the
paper.
Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
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