Two US-born teenagers forced by their father to attend a religious school in Pakistan for nearly four years have returned home to Atlanta after a documentary filmmaker pushed for their release.
Noor and Mahboob Khan, now 17 and 16, arrived in Atlanta late on Thursday from Jamia Binoria, a prominent madrasah in Karachi. The boys are featured in a new documentary Karachi Kids by filmmaker Imran Raza, set to be released next week.
The boys’ father, Fazal Khan, reportedly told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he sent them to the madrasah because he wanted them exposed to Islam. He said he had tried to bring his sons home but the boys could not get exit visas.
“I sent a ticket. But I couldn’t get the paperwork,” he told the paper on Wednesday. “I’m responsible for my children.”
A woman who identified herself as the boys’ sister answered the phone at the family’s home in Norcross, Georgia, on Friday afternoon.
She said her father and brothers were not home and declined to comment further.
Raza had been working to get the boys home when US Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, got involved. In a July 4 visit to Pakistan, he asked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to release the Khan brothers.
The teens were sent home just a few days later.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko declined to say whether the agency is questioning the Khan brothers. He said earlier in an e-mailed statement that the FBI helped coordinate the boys’ return in conjunction with the US State Department.
In a statement posted on the documentary’s Web site on Thursday, Raza said he is grateful that Noor and Mahboob are home.
He said hundreds more US children remain in Pakistani madrasah — many of which are considered extremist Muslim schools that indoctrinate students with radical beliefs.
“This pipeline to jihad must be closed,” Raza wrote on the Web site.
Raza traveled to Karachi after the July 7, 2005, terrorist attack in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers. There he found Noor and Mahboob, who had come to the school the previous year.
The documentary follows the brothers, showing how their schooling affects them.
In the documentary’s trailer, a young Noor talks about missing his home and family. He says waking up every day and realizing he is in Pakistan is like “a big punch.” “You don’t know how badly I want to go back,” he says. “If there was a plane right now, I’d just go step on it and go back to America.”
But after a couple of years in the madrasah, Noor says he is glad his father sent him to the school. He says he does not believe Muslims were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“Not one Jew died that day. That is what they say,” he says in the film.
Ericka Pertierra, a producer for the documentary, said she hopes to help Noor and Mahboob reacclimate to living in the US.
After becoming involved in the film, Pertierra founded the South Asian Foundation for Education Reform to bring attention to radical madrasah recruiting and indoctrinating American boys with radical ideology.
She said she has identified 200 American boys in 22 madrasah, but there are many more madrassas in Pakistan.
“Noor and Mahboob are just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
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