Claims that a Pakistani man trained as a terrorist was working as a chef in New Zealand have proved to be false, says Immigration Minister David Cunliffe. Cunliffe ordered an official investigation last month after the allegations were made in the Right-wing Investigate magazine and latched on to by the National Party.
The minister said yesterday that it appeared the allegations were made as the result of an employment dispute between the Pakistani man and a Waikato restaurant owner. "Investigate got it wrong again. The whole story was based on, as I am advised, information from the employer and his two sons," Cunliffe told The Press. "It would appear what we've got here is most probably a personal dispute between parties which Investigate has tried to drum up into a national security story." Asked about the magazine's claim that the man had spent time in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, Cunliffe said: "As I'm advised there is no substance to the allegations that were made."
The magazine article was headlined "Jihad in the kitchen" and claimed two Pakistani cousins, with links to Lashkar-i-Toiba, had been granted work permits in 2002 after arriving on false documents. The men were named as Jameel-ur-Rehman and Muhammed Anwar. Investigate said Anwar had been deported but Rehman remained in New Zealand, something immigration officials later confirmed.
Lashkar-i-Toiba is one of the biggest groups fighting Indian control of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian authorities blame it for the August 25 bombings in the city of Hyderabad that killed at least 40 people. An 18-year insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, has killed about 50,000 people.
