Detainee case questions grow

[Forkboy]

Friends vouch for 3 men held; investigators mum

With federal investigators continuing to probe the attempted Times Square car bombing under a shroud of secrecy, friends and acquaintances of the three New England men arrested in the case provided a fuller picture of them yesterday.

A roommate of two Pakistani men detained in Greater Boston Thursday said he was stunned by their arrests and unaware of any links between them and the suspect in this month’s attempted attack.

“It was a shock for me; I never heard anything like this before,’’ Sayyed Jehan, 33, said at the Allston-Brighton Islamic Center, a mosque where he and one of the two roommates, Pir Khan, worshiped. “He’s a nice guy. From what I knew of him, there was nothing wrong with him.’’

Khan, a 43-year-old taxi driver who has lived with Jehan in Watertown for eight years, and Aftab Khan, a gas station employee in his 20s who moved in about six months ago, were taken into custody by federal authorities Thursday during a series of early morning raids across the Northeast.

Investigators are probing whether Pir and Aftab Khan — along with a third Pakistani man arrested in Maine, Mohammad Shafiq Rahman — had provided money to Faisal Shahzad, the man accused in the car bombing attempt. The three men have not been charged with any crime, but are being held on what authorities said were immigration violations.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/05/15/detainee_case_questions_grow/