FBI releases teens held over bomb-plot concerns

updated 8:54 a.m. ET May 7, 2005

NEW YORK - The FBI has released a 16-year-old girl and will allow another to leave the country after the teens were detained for six weeks amid concerns they were potential recruits for a suicide bomb plot that never materialized.

The girls were picked up separately by authorities on March 24 and sent to a detention center in Leesport, Pa.

Adama Bah, 16, a Guinean immigant, returned to her high school on Friday to friends and teachers who insisted she was innocent. The other girl, who was not identified because she is a minor and was not charged with any crime, was granted a request allowing her to return to Bangladesh with her family.

Details of the case have remained sketchy and it has been marked by closed hearings, sealed government documents and gag orders for lawyers. But lawyers for both girls said the teens had no connection to any suicide bombing plots.

Bah’s lawyer, Natasha Pierre, told The New York Times in Saturday’s editions that her client “should never have been detained in the first place.” She said the teens were not friends and it was unclear Bah was swept into the investigation.

Troy Mattes, the Bangladeshi girl’s lawyer, said his client came to the United States at age 4. Her family’s applications for political asylum were closed in the late 1990s, although there were no deportation orders against them, Mattes said.

When the general consul of Bangladesh asked why the girl was being detained, the homeland security officials wrote that the girl was being held only because she was in the country illegally. Her parents asked the government to let the family leave the country.

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