WASHINGTON — In the photograph from last November, Ramy Zamzam, 22, is a proud first-year dental student in his new white jacket, framed by his beaming parents. A few weeks later, he and four American friends would disappear, resurfacing in Pakistan, accused by United States and Pakistani law enforcement officials of seeking to join the jihad against American forces in Afghanistan.
At a time of new concern about radicalization of Muslims in the United States, Mr. Zamzam’s story is a baffling tale and a tragedy for parents who from all appearances are loyal and law-abiding Muslim immigrants living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
In an interview on Friday, as the men’s trial resumed in Pakistan, Mr. Zamzam’s mother, Amal Khalifa, described a harrowing visit she and her husband made early this month to the eldest of her three children. The confident student, she said, the “multitasker” who had excelled as a student and community volunteer through high school and college, was shattered by four months in a Pakistani jail.
“He cried and clung to me,” Ms. Khalifa said, choking up. “When I saw him like that, it broke my heart.”
By her account, Mr. Zamzam asked about his two younger brothers and denied that he had had any plans to join militants. “He said: ‘Mom, I love my country. I want to go back to my country. Why do the Pakistanis want to do this to us?’ ” Ms. Khalifa said in the interview, at the Washington offices of the Council on American Islamic Relations, an advocacy group that has assisted the parents
In an interview on Friday, as the men’s trial resumed in Pakistan, Mr. Zamzam’s mother, Amal Khalifa, described a harrowing visit she and her husband made early this month to the eldest of her three children. The confident student, she said, the “multitasker” who had excelled as a student and community volunteer through high school and college, was shattered by four months in a Pakistani jail.
“He cried and clung to me,” Ms. Khalifa said, choking up. “When I saw him like that, it broke my heart.”
By her account, Mr. Zamzam asked about his two younger brothers and denied that he had had any plans to join militants. “
He said: ‘Mom, I love my country. I want to go back to my country. Why do the Pakistanis want to do this to us?’ ” Ms. Khalifa said in the interview, at the Washington offices of the Council on American Islamic Relations, an advocacy group that has assisted the parents
Ms. Khalifa declined to discuss the video, which Mr. Zamzam left with a Virginia friend on a thumb drive. She said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked her not to speak publicly about its contents.
During the visit with his parents, she said, Mr. Zamzam, told them he and the other men disappeared two days after Thanksgiving to travel to Pakistan to attend Mr. Farooq’s wedding. They chose not to tell their parents about their plans, Mr. Zamzam said, because they were afraid they would be forbidden from taking an expensive trip to a possibly dangerous place.
Topic: A Thanksgiving Meal, Then Charges of Jihad: A Mother’s Tale