CAIRO, April 9 (IslamOnline.net) – The arrest of a 16-year-old Muslim schoolgirl in the United States on charges of planning to be a suicide bomber drew fire from her teachers and classmates, reported a leading American daily on Saturday, April 9.

“She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school,” Jessica Siegel, an English teacher at Heritage High School in East Harlem, told The New York Times.

“She's a wonderful, wonderful girl.”

The Guinean tenth-grader has been described by the FBI as “an imminent threat to the security of the United States” on allegation of planning to be a suicide bomber, according to a government document provided to the daily by a federal official.

She is being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania and her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation.

“She's about the last person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber,” said Ms. Siegel, who was profiled in Samuel G. Freedman’s book Small Victories as an unsentimental but fiercely committed teacher who provoked and delighted her students.

Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist, was no less furious.

“They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus,” she said.

“I feel like, how dare they? She's a minor, and even if she's not a citizen, she has rights as a human being,” said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the girl to her house daily and knows her family well.

“This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old,” Ms. Lane said.

The girl’s teachers and neighbors spoke positively of her lively classroom curiosity and after-school care for four younger siblings while her parents, living in the US since 1990, eked out a living.

“I just can't fathom this,” said Kimberly Lane, her art teacher.

Like Ms. Carr, she has repeatedly visited the detention center but was not allowed to speak to the girl, who has no lawyer.

“This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old,” Ms. Lane said.

“She's just a regular teenager - like, two weeks ago her biggest worry was whether she'd done her homework or studied for a science test”.

According to the NY Times among the many unanswered questions raised about the issue is why, if the girl was really a suspect, no FBI agent had shown up to search her school locker or question her classmates.

The girl was so well liked by her schoolmate that when she ran for student body president, she came in second to one of her best friends - the Christian daughter of the president of the parent-teacher association, Deleen P. Carr.

Her classmates also sent her support letters after her detention.

At Woodrow Wilson Houses a few blocks from the school, a sticker on the family's apartment door reads, “Allah is our protector.”

Christine Anderson, a neighbor, shook her head in disbelief when she learned why she had not seen the girl or her father in recent weeks.

“Why would they take the lady's daughter?” she asked.

“They're nice people, and hard-working people. I've been here four years. I know she's not a problem child.”

A recent nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University, showed that at least 44 percent of the Americans backs curbing Muslims’ civil rights and monitoring their places of worship.

A May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded that Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the US have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.