Computers, Literature Seized
by Foster Klug, Associated Press
BALTIMORE (AP) - Investigators were examining computers, literature and identification cards seized from a cramped apartment where police serving a warrant took five immigrants into custody, officials said.
Police said Wednesday that the five were arrested on immigration violations. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Chris Bentley declined to specify the charges, but added the violations were “nothing that the INS in Baltimore doesn’t see day in, day out.”
Two of those arrested Tuesday were Canadian citizens - one originally from Afghanistan and one from Pakistan - and the others were from Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bentley said.
Police searching the apartment seized ID cards, photographs, two computers, notebooks and literature, some of it written in Arabic, said Baltimore police spokeswoman Ragina Averella.
She said officials were translating the Arabic literature and trying to determine what Web sites might have been searched on the computers.
“It’s too early in the investigation to know” if the material is related to terrorism, she said.
Barry Maddox, an FBI spokesman in Baltimore, said the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was assisting police.
“Right now, we don’t have any specific information to indicate any terrorism threat,” he said.
The men were being held in INS custody awaiting deportation proceedings, Bentley said. Bond was set at $5,000 for each man, he said. It wasn’t clear Thursday morning if the men had attorneys.
Police originally went to the apartment Tuesday to serve a warrant on another man for arson by threat and harassment. Police found eight people, five without identification, Averella said. They then called INS officials.