WASHINGTON, July 17 (AFP) - FBI agents have begun interviewing Muslims and Arab-Americans in the United States in a bid to prevent terrorist attacks ahead of the November 2 presidential election, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
An FBI official told the Post on condition of anonymity that a few dozen Muslim students, community leaders and businesspeople had already consented to be interviewed, stressing the interview subjects were not suspects.
Several people interviewed in California and Arizona have been asked if they knew people who were recently in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, near the Afghan border, an area believed to be a haven for al-Qaeda operatives.
The agents also asked about the Abu Nour mosque and school in Syria, which they suggested was popular among American converts to Islam, the Post said.
"We were told by the FBI agents that they're concerned there could be a coming threat from people who are recent converts to Islam," Stacy Tolchin, a lawyer from San Francisco who accompanied a Turkish Kurdish immigrant to an interview this week, told the Post.
Yaser Alamoodi, a Yemeni national studying at the University of Arizona, said his FBI interviewer was friendly and polite while asking whether he knew anyone who had recently come back from Pakistan, harbored strong hostility toward Americans or expressed interest in a government agency or building.
"The questions were just ridiculous," 27-year-old Alamoodi told the Post. "I said, 'You guys really think you're going to get anywhere with these kind of questions?'"
He said he was surprised that the agents chose him for an interview: "I don't go to the mosque that often," he said. "Unless they have free food."