-- One was a bright, ambitious former intern for this city's mayor, another a security guard who had signed up for the Army Reserve. Now they and four others are accused of being members of a terrorist cell trying to join al Qaeda.

As those who know them today described the backgrounds of the six people charged by federal authorities, few clues explained their alleged turn to radical, anti-American politics. Indeed, some friends and families insisted the accusations couldn't be true.

"I'm shocked, I'm outraged," Everett Battle Jr. told a Houston television station. He said his brother, Jeffrey Leon Battle, who once lived in Texas and is one of the men charged, "is not involved in that kind of stuff. He wouldn't do that and I'm going to assume that he's a Muslim being persecuted."

Battle, Patrice Lumumba Ford and October Martinque Lewis were arrested here Friday morning. A fourth man, Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, was arrested in Dearborn, Mich. Two others are at large and believed to be overseas.

"It's all a mistake -- it's got to be," Kent Ford, who is Ford's father, said to journalists here.

The suspects are accused of traveling to China and Pakistan in an attempt to cross into Afghanistan and join al Qaeda and the Taliban. Lewis is accused of sending them money for the scheme.

Controversial politics would not be new to Patrice Lumumba Ford. Kent Ford had once been a member of the Black Panthers, and named his son for the African resistance leader and first president of Congo.

The younger Ford, a 31-year-old with handsome features, impressed many in Portland with his intelligence and command of Mandarin Chinese. According to family members, he graduated from a local high school in 1989 and enrolled in Portland State University, excelling in international relations with a focus on East Asia, an interest stemming from his pursuit of martial arts as a child.

He spent a year at a prestigious language program in China, the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.

In the summer of 1998 and again in September 1999, he was an international relations intern for Portland Mayor Vera Katz. He had also interned for the previous mayor, Bud Clark, in 1996.

He had yet another internship in the mayor's office of Portland's sister city in Taiwan, Kaohsiung, (pronounced Gao-chung), said Linda Walton, of the Institute for Asian Studies at the university.

"It's unfathomable and heartbreaking," she said. "I knew him as a serious student. He had an excellent academic record. I can't imagine someone undertaking that difficult path for the purpose at issue now. It doesn't compute."

In China, Ford converted to Islam and where he met and married a Chinese woman, his father said.

Upon returning to this country, Ford taught physical education at the Islamic School of the Muslim Educational Trust near Portland. He grew the beard of a devout Muslim, and began to wear long robes instead of shirts and trousers.

At City Hall, Ford had been considered an intern "who did a good job, who was well-liked," said mayoral spokeswoman Sarah Bott. But in 2001 he sent messages to several members of the mayor's staff that they considered threatening and turned over to the police. Bott declined to give details of the correspondence.

Still, "from what I know this doesn't make any sense," said James Britt II, who was married to Ford's mother before she married Kent Ford, and has known the suspect since childhood. "He's a very quiet, loving, caring person."

The other two suspects, Battle and Lewis, had married in 1999 in Portland. They divorced after five months, though they apparently continued to live together.

October Lewis, 25, was born in Vallejo, Calif.; Jeffrey Battle, 32, appears from state records to be from Houston. According to Lewis's mother, the couple met in Houston, then moved to Portland in 1998.

Battle got a license to work as an unarmed security guard in August 1998, completing eight hours of training from a certified trainer, and went to work part time for the Portland-based security firm First Response.

In September 2000, he incorporated a private security company, as-Sabiqun Vanguard Security Corp., according to state records. But the company was dissolved by the state a year later after Battle neglected to file an annual report.

Battle joined the U.S. Army Reserve in the fall of 1999 and was assigned to the 671st Engineer Company in Portland, a unit that specializes in bridge construction. According to an Army spokeswoman, he underwent basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., , but then failed to show up for a course of advanced training at Fort Lee, Va. He was administratively discharged.

In Portland, Battle and Lewis -- who was caring for Battle's 5-year-old son, Ibrahim, whom he had with another woman -- were very involved with other devout Muslims, and avoided contact with non-Muslim neighbors. Battle wore a beard and long white or tan robes, while Lewis also wore roomy, ankle-length robes and covered her entire face, except her eyes, with a veil.

Neighbors said they observed frequent meetings of bearded men in caftans in a parking lot behind the 65-unit apartment complex in which the couple lived. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, three neighbors saw Battle and a couple of others appear in military fatigues. After hearing Battle's son on the playground say "America deserved what it got," neighbor Matt Hawkey said he alerted the FBI.

The Battles apparently had little money. The apartment where they'd lived since September 2001 had no furniture until very recently, said Mike Cunningham, who maintains the units.

"There were no beds, no mattresses. They must have slept on the floor," he said. A couple of months ago, he noticed the arrival of a kitchen table and a computer, by which time two FBI agents had moved in to the complex and were conducting surveillance. At the time of the raid, the couple had acquired mattresses but little else in the way of furniture.

Less information is available about Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, 22, arrested in Michigan and who police said was being extradited to Portland for arraignment. Bilal is an American citizen but much of his family is in his native Saudi Arabia, according to federal authorities. He also once lived in Portland.

The others charged are at large. They are Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, 24, who is an American citizen, and Habis Abdulla al Saoub, 36, a legal resident of the United States from Jordan.

"It's all a mistake -- it's got to be," said Kent Ford, father of Patrice Lumumba Ford, who was arrested on Friday as a suspected al Qaeda sympathizer.