WASHINGTON: A Pakistani woman who had lived, until recently, in Upper Darby, Philadelphia, was sentenced on Nov. 19 to 16 months in prison for lying to federal agents who were looking for her ex-husband, a suspected terrorist, Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Humaira Jawed, 27, daughter of a wealthy Pakistani businessman, is understood to have misled agents by claiming that her ex-husband was in Pakistan when she knew pretty well that he was driving a cab in Philadelphia, the report said.
About 50 agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force spent a week hunting for Agha Ali Abbas Qazalbash in Philadelphia and New York, only to learn that he had flown back to Pakistan two days after his ex-wife was first questioned, the report added.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Beam Winter on Nov. 19 told U.S. District Judge Bruce W. Kauffman that Jawed’s lies gave Qazalbash “time to successfully flee the country.”
Sentencing guidelines called for Jawed to receive a prison term in the range of 10 to 16 months and the judge gave her the maximum punishment under the guidelines.
Qazalbash, who had served as a vice president of an outlawed Pakistani religious sect before entering this country, had overstayed his visa and was living illegally when the agents started looking for him in July. After divorcing his wife, he also had engaged in a sham marriage to a U.S. citizen in Philadelphia in an apparent effort to stay on legally, prosecutors said.
In his ex-wife’s apartment, where he lived, at times, even after the divorce, agents found documents linking Qazalbash to the group, Sipah-e-Mohammed Pakistan, or SMP, a group that was outlawed in Pakistan last year. Agents also found correspondence suggesting that Qazalbash had “cursed America a thousand times,” the prosecutor said.
Also found was the group’s fatwah, a “religious edict” to assassinate the leader of a rival sect, Maulana Azam Tariq, who was slain in Pakistan just last month, FBI agent Kathryn Lambert told the judge.
Defense attorney Stanford Shmukler told the judge that there was no evidence that his client knew of her ex-husband’s political activities or even that Qazalbash remained involved with the outlawed group after coming to the U.S. three years ago, the Inquirer report said.
She claimed that their marriage was “arranged” by her rich father and that she hadn’t met Qazalbash until the day they were wed, Shmukler said. Under her plea bargain she will be sent back to Pakistan after serving her jail sentence of 16 months, the report said.
