From the New York Times, with thanks to EPG:
Two 16-year-old girls from New York City were arrested last month and charged with immigration violations after the F.B.I. asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers, according to a government document. A spokesman for one of their families, however, said the accusation was false and said the government had probably misinterpreted a school essay written by one of the girls.
The girls are both in the country illegally, one born in Guinea and the other from Bangladesh, and are being held in a family detention center in Leesport, in southeastern Pennsylvania, according to the document, provided by a federal agent. They were arrested on March 24, and one appeared at an immigration hearing on April 1 in York, Pa.
The document, which describes the background of the case, said the F.B.I. believed the girls presented “an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.” It does not describe the nature of that evidence.
But one federal official, not connected to the F.B.I., expressed skepticism that the teenagers represented a real risk of a suicide bombing….
Adem Carroll, a community activist with the Islamic Circle of North America who first approached this reporter about the case on behalf of one of the girls’ parents, said the case appeared to be “an investigation that’s gotten out of hand, like a lot of other so-called terror investigations.” He added, “I’m confident that things will be cleared up.”…
Police detectives, and then federal immigration agents, searched her belongings and confiscated her computer and the essays that she had written as part of a home schooling program, according to the family. One essay concerned suicide. The family maintained that the essay asserted that suicide is against Islamic law, but it led investigators to question her sharply about her political beliefs.
Detectives from the precinct went to the girl’s home to question her about two weeks before her arrest, Mr. Carroll said, asking about her absence from a public high school since September. The mother said her daughter would be schooled at home and was seeking a high school equivalency degree because of conflicts between her Islamic dress code – a full veil – and the school’s dress code….
Last night, a 20-year-old woman friend of the Bangladeshi teenager said she had known the young woman for three years and was close to her. Told of the allegations, she responded in disbelief, “That’s crazy.”
Why, of course it is.