SAN FRANCISCO, 1 July 2005 — A California imam facing deportation after his arrest in a terrorism probe, has been fired, the mosque’s president said on Wednesday.
The board of the Lodi Muslim Mosque in Lodi, California voted unanimously to fire Shabbir Ahmed, who last week told an immigration court in San Francisco he regretted making speeches in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that criticized the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Mosque president Mohammed Shoaib said the mosque’s board voted to fire Ahmed because it did not want the mosque linked to those speeches.
“When he admitted to the allegations that he made some speeches, that’s when we took our action,” Shoaib told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Ahmed’s lawyer, Saad Ahmad, said the board may not have authority to fire the 39-year-old cleric and that his client continues to consider himself the mosque’s imam.
Authorities arrested Ahmed earlier this month on immigration charges. Federal prosecutors believe his religious training in Pakistan brought him close to figures sympathetic to Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime.
Separately, federal prosecutors have charged two Lodi men, Umer Hayat and his son Hamid Hayat, with lying about alleged links to terrorist training camps in Pakistan. Both have pleaded not guilty.
