U.S. man charged with aiding lethal attack in Pakistan

SEATTLE — A Portland, Ore., man was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday on charges of aiding one of three suicide bombers who conducted a deadly attack near the headquarters of Pakistan’s intelligence service in Lahore in 2009.

At least 30 people were killed in the attack, in which armed men sprayed guards with gunfire before sending a van loaded with explosives toward a police building near the provincial headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, one of the most powerful institutions in Pakistan.

Nearly 300 others were injured as the building was reduced to rubble and several others were twisted and broken. Emergency workers lined up corpses on the sidewalk.

A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday alleges that Reaz Qadir Khan, 48, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in southeast Portland, was providing money and advice to one of the attackers, Ali Jaleel, who had traveled to Lahore from the Maldives with the aim of joining Islamic militants there.

“Those who provide material support to terrorists are just as responsible for the deaths and destruction that follow as those who commit the violent acts,” Greg Fowler, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said in a statement announcing the arrest.

Khan arranged through an unidentified intermediary in Los Angeles to have $2,450 available for Jaleel to pick up from a “trusted brother” in Pakistan, but told Jaleel he should “keep discussion with him to a minimum” when he picked up the money, the indictment said.

On May 27, 2009, Jaleel and two others mounted the attack that struck near the regional ISI headquarters, killing all three bombers — but not before Jaleel recorded a video released by As Sahab, the media outlet of Al Qaeda, taking responsibility for the attack.

Little is known about Khan except that he had been a wastewater employee with the city of Portland’s environmental services bureau since 2007.

His brother attended his brief hearing before U.S. Magistrate Paul Papak on Tuesday but did not speak to reporters.

According to the indictment, Khan and Jaleel engaged in a long email correspondence that began in 2005 with what appeared to be nostalgic recollections of their past ambitions.

Khan said he was “at a standstill in the matter of knowledge and practice,” and that “everything that we used to talk about now seems like a distant dream,” the indictment said. He said he was asking God to forgive him for his laxness and inaction.

Jaleel reminded him of promises they’d made to seek “martyrdom” in the name of God. “Where are the words you said with tears in your eyes, that ‘We shall strive until Allah’s word is superior or until we perish???’ ” he wrote in January 2006, according to the indictment.

“This world is of no use to us, so let’s sacrifice ourself [sic] for the pleasure of Allah in his way.”