The Democratic opponent of Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, has returned a $250 campaign contribution from an official with the Council on American-Islamic Relations after Republicans questioned whether the donation came from a terrorist.

Four relatives of a father and son held on terror-related charges said they have been summoned to testify before a federal grand jury because they refused to talk to federal investigators.

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River

(District includes Galt)

“The horrific tragedy of Sept. 11 was the main reason I felt the need to return to public service. In a region of Pakistan, the mastermind of that crime and the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. I am pleased to hear this news.

When Osama bin Laden was killed in May, Bushra Salem remembers overhearing a Tokay High student yelling “Your leader’s dead” to a Pakistani-American girl.

Muslims meeting with city leaders Thursday at the Carnegie Forum expressed worries about a possible backlash against their community following the much-publicized arrests of local men on federal charges.

Some American Muslims, including at least one in the Lodi area, are concerned that the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Muslim extremists will unfairly target Islam.

Lodi Pakistanis are closely watching news from their home country as protests over a presidential power grab in the south Asian nation have led to hundreds of arrests.

Lower Sacramento Road, a main link between Lodi and Stockton, is surrounded mostly by farms. But the stretch between Harney Lane and Armstrong Road is also the future home of the 10,200-square-foot California Islamic Center.

The walls are bare and the photographs and plaques are still bubble-wrapped, but Drew Parenti is on the job, keeping tabs on an 88,000-square-mile swath of California.

Residents in Lodi had hoped to set aside the suspicions that divided them in the 11 months since federal agents arrested a young man, his father and two Muslim religious leaders amid terrorism allegations.

Al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden. Terror camps. FBI investigation. Lodi. For 10 months, those words have frequently been used when the city of Lodi is mentioned in local, national and even national news. Sometimes residents' far-off acquaintances joke about it, and sometimes online bloggers cast the city as a hotbed of terror.

Lodi resident Hamid Hayat was sentenced Monday to 24 years in federal prison after a jury convicted him of supporting terrorists and then lying about it to the FBI.