A Virginia man who came to the US from Pakistan has been charged with supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba, the radical Islamist terrorist group behind the 2008 shooting attack in Mumbai, India.
Justice Department officials said Friday that Jubair Ahmad, 24, of Woodbridge, received religious training from the terrorist group as a teenager in Pakistan and later attended one of its training camps.
He came to the United States in 2007 with his family. He's been under investigation for two years, ever since the FBI got a tip that he might be connected to the group, the officials said.
Court documents say that last fall, he produced and uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube on behalf of of the group, showing its leader and purporting to show "jihadi martyrs" and armored trucks exploding after having been hit by improvised explosive devices. Investigators say when asked about the video, Jubair falsely denied having anything to do with it.
The State Department has designated Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist group. It is among nearly a dozen rebel groups operating in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the group even though it is officially banned there.
In June, a Pakistani-born businessman in Chicago was found guilty of providing support to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 2008 Mumbai assault but not guilty of taking part in the attack. Tahawwur Rana, 50, a former Pakistan Army doctor with Canadian citizenship, was also found guilty of conspiring to attack a Danish newspaper, a plot hatched by the militant group but never carried out.
The key witness in that case — Rana's childhood friend, David Headley — implicated Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, in the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people.
Headley admitted scouting targets for the Mumbai attackers sent by Lashkar-e-Taiba.