Georgia student held on terrorism charge

MIAMI (Reuters) – U.S. authorities in the southern state of
Georgia have charged a 21-year-old engineering student at
Georgia Tech in Atlanta with supporting terrorism.

An indictment returned by a grand jury on March 23 and
unsealed on Thursday said that for the past year Syed Haris
Ahmed had attempted to provide and conspired with others to
provide material support and resources for acts of
international terrorism, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the
Northern District of Georgia said in a statement.

“The indictment is the first public result of an extensive
and ongoing terrorism investigation…,” said U.S. Attorney
David Nahmias in the statement. “The case against Mr. Ahmed is
serious and involves national security, and it will be
prosecuted with that in mind.”

The U.S. attorney’s office said he was being held at an
undisclosed location because of the nature of the offense and
did not provide further details.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported on
Friday that the FBI believed Ahmed, a mechanical engineering
major at Georgia Institute of Technology, attended a training
camp in Pakistan last year. His family, who immigrated from
Pakistan in 1997, said he went there to attend a religious
school, the paper added.

It said another person from the Atlanta area, 19-year-old
Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, had been arrested in Bangladesh and was
being flown to New York to face charges there.