'Surreal' arrests in Pakistan disrupt close family, Muslim community

Talha Chaudhry says his brother gave little hint of his intentions the weekend he disappeared.

The two had gone to lunch that Friday at a fried chicken restaurant in Springfield to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid, the end of Ramadan. Umar, 24, a George Mason University student, told his younger brother he was going to spend the weekend in Baltimore with a friend. Great! Talha thought. Their parents were away, so Talha had their Fairfax home all to himself -- a rare occurrence.

It wasn't until that Monday, when Umar failed to show up for work at the family business, that Talha began to worry. Texts and calls went unanswered. That evening, he dialed the friend's cellphone number. The sound he heard floored him.

It was an international dial tone. Then, no answer.

He hung up and paced in circles. How could this be? Would his brother have left the country without telling his family? What was going on?

About a week later, he got his answer. Umar Chaudhry and four of his closest friends -- members of his youth group at a Fairfax County mosque -- were arrested by Pakistani authorities, suspected of traveling overseas to join al-Qaeda and carry out terrorist attacks. Pakistani authorities have recommended criminal charges against the men in that country, charges that lawyers involved in the case say could come as early as Wednesday. The arrests of the young men in December roiled the local Muslim community and left friends and family members in the United States scrambling for answers. Families of the men -- Chaudhry; Howard University dental student Ramy Zamzam, 22; former Virginia Commonwealth University business student Ahmed A. Minni, 20; and Fairfax County residents Waqar Khan, 22, and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18 -- are cooperating with authorities but have said little publicly until now.

Talha Chaudhry, 22, is the first relative to speak out about the young men, whose attorney claimed in court in January that they had gone overseas to "help the homeless Muslims," not wage jihad. His parents, who had gone to Pakistan on an extended vacation last fall to find Umar a wife, have yet to return to the United States.

Talha Chaudhry says he's mystified about how the five boys he grew up with could have transformed from young students -- who spent their time praying, trying to avoid alcohol and girls and playing FIFA Soccer on Xbox -- into suspected jihadists. All in a matter of months.

Umar "was a gullible-type kid," Chaudhry says. "They were all gullible."

Talha Chaudhry is slight and intense, with spiky hair and hip T-shirt and jeans. In a three-hour discussion this weekend at a sandwich shop in Alexandria, he clearly was still reeling from the loss of four close friends and a brother he both loved and fiercely competed with -- both in life and in sports such as volleyball and tennis. He agreed to be interviewed but declined to be photographed.

"I lost five brothers," Chaudhry says. "It's so shocking. I can't get to my emotions on that. It's still like a dream. It's surreal."

Chaudhry's family immigrated to the United States from the Sargodha region of Pakistan when he was 4 and his brother 6. Theirs was a typical immigrant story; the family lived in a series of modest homes in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County as their father, Khalid Farooq Chaudhry, worked his way up from a gas station attendant to a cabdriver to a paralegal.