RUTHFULLY YOURS

For more than a decade, an elderly, frail imam led a devout following at South Florida’s oldest mosque.

But authorities say Hafiz Muhammad Sher Ali Khan was leading a secret life as a terrorist sympathizer at Miami’s Flagler Mosque.

On Saturday, FBI agents arrested the 76-year-old Muslim cleric on charges of conspiring with four other Khan family members and a Pakistani man to finance the terrorist activities of the Taliban rebels in Pakistan — including sending at least $50,000 through American banks to the insurgents for guns, training, schools and other resources to carry out violent attacks against U.S. forces and allies in that region.

U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said that while Khan was a “spiritual leader,” he was “by no means a man of peace.”

But one of Hafiz Khan’s sons, who was not implicated in the case, said his father was too sick and old to be engaged in such extremist activities.

“None of my family supports the Taliban,” said Ikram Khan, a Miami taxi driver, adding his family has lived in the United States since 1994. “We support this country.”

The conspiracy indictment brought against the six defendants marks the most significant terrorism case in South Florida since the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami convicted one-time enemy combatant Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen formerly of Broward County, and two other Muslim men on similar charges related to their plot to aid al Qaeda in 2007. As in the Padilla case, the indictment against the Khan family is built upon the federal material-support statute, which in the post-9/11 era the Justice Department has traditionally deployed to charge people with supplying money and other resources to U.S.-designated terrorist groups overseas.

The case against Hafiz Khan and the others — including son Izhar Khan, an imam of a Margate mosque, also arrested Saturday — began in late 2008 when U.S. banks began reporting suspicious financial transactions by the father to his bank accounts in Pakistan, according to authorities. It was not clear whether the father and son solicited donations from their mosques for the alleged money transfers to the Pakistani Taliban.

To build the case, FBI agents wiretapped phone conversations for two years in which Hafiz Khan and others were recorded talking about transferring tens of thousands of dollars to Pakistani insurgents for planned assaults against the Pakistan government and U.S. interests there and in Afghanistan.

According to the indictment, Hafiz Khan spoke with another son, Irfan Khan, on June 25, 2009, in which the father “called for an attack on the Pakistani Assembly that would resemble the September 2008 suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.”

In another recorded conversation with an unnamed person on Sept. 22, 2010, Hafiz Khan talked about Pakistani insurgents in Karachi and praised the Taliban in Afghanistan for killing seven American soldiers, declaring “his wish that God bring death to 50,000 more,” the indictment said.

“The indictment and arrests were based on the defendants words, actions and bank accounts,” Ferrer told reporters at his office Saturday. “They were providing anything the Taliban needed in Pakistan to sustain their effort.”

Those allegations shocked some South Florida Muslims when they heard the news Saturday.

“I have never heard him say a harsh word,” said Asad Ba-Yunus, spokesman for the Muslim Communities Association, which owns the Flagler Mosque and another mosque in Miami Gardens.

“He was very soft-spoken and spiritual in nature,” Ba-Yunus said. “That’s why this is such a surprise for our community.”

The Muslim Communities Association also issued a statement condemning any act or attempt to support, directly, or indirectly extremism, violence or terrorism. However, they emphasized that those arrested should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Ferrer, the FBI and other authorities stressed that the terrorism case was not based on a “sting” operation. They also emphasized that the alleged terrorist actions of a handful of Muslims in South Florida should not be used to condemn their entire community.

“We will not allow this country to be used as a base for funding and recruiting terrorists,” said John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami Office. But he added: “I remind everyone that the Muslim and Arab-American members of our community should never be judged by the illegal activities of a few.”

The four-count, terrorism conspiracy indictment, filed Thursday, charges Hafiz Khan; his son, Izhar Khan, 24, imam at the Jamaat Al-Mu’mineen mosque in Margate; and one of his other sons, Irfan Khan, 37, of Miami. Irfan Khan was arrested in Los Angeles on Saturday.

All are U.S. citizens.

The remaining defendants are at large in Pakistan: Amina Khan, also known as “Amina Bibi,” the daughter of Hafiz Khan; her son, Alam Zeb, who is Hafiz Khan’s grandson; and Ali Rehman, also known as “Faisal Ali Rehman.”

Each of the four counts in the indictment carries up to 15 years in prison.

The indictment does not charge the mosques themselves with any wrongdoing.

According to the indictment, Hafiz Khan’s money was channeled to the Pakistani Taliban, which authorities say is responsible for the killing of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the attempted bombing in New York’s Time Square last year and suicide bombings that have killed countless Pakistani citizens, police and government officials.

In addition, the indictment alleges than Khan supported the Pakistani Taliban through a madrassa, or Islamic school, that he founded and controlled in the Swat region of Pakistan. The madrassa was allegedly used to provide Taliban members with shelter and aid, and to train children as members of the mujahideen, Islamic militant fighters. Some of the children have been trained to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

The indictment outlined $50,000 in wire transfers between Hafiz Khan and the Pakistani members of the conspiracy, but authorities said that amount does not account for all of the money the imam and others are suspected of sending overseas.

Ferrer, the U.S. attorney in Miami, said that money can go a long way toward purchasing firearms in Pakistan.

There, he said, a gun can be bought for $10.

Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown and the Sun Sentinel also contributed to this report.