The arraignment of the Lackawanna Six attracted national attention. Derek Gee/Buffalo News
Posted on 09/10/2007 3:33:39 PM PDT by Libloather
A search for answers in the case against the Lackawanna Six
By Mark Sommer NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
Updated: 09/09/07 6:29 AM
The arraignment of the Lackawanna Six attracted national attention. Derek Gee/Buffalo News
It was five years ago today that police apprehended the first member of what was quickly dubbed the Lackawanna Six.
Headlines blared far beyond Western New York, as news stories raised the specter of homegrown terrorists training with al-Qaida in southern Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, it would later be revealed, was present, too.
President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller quickly proclaimed the Lackawanna Six to be a “sleeper cell,” ready to be activated at a moment’s notice to commit a terrorist act in and against the United States.
Eventually, the six went to prison after pleading guilty to providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization — which some felt the goverment railroaded them into accepting.
The Lackawanna Six were never accused in court of planning or engaging in a terrorist act.
Left unanswered was whether the Western New Yorkers were terrorists-in-waiting, as the FBI and the Bush administration maintained, or dupes who had gone on a trip in search of their Islamic identities that, unwittingly, led them to an anti-American training camp and bin Laden four months before 9/11.
“The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in the Age of Terror,” by Dina Temple-Raston, looks into that central question and finds the answer weighted toward the latter. Temple-Raston, National Public Radio’s FBI correspondent, found no evidence the Lackawanna Six were terrorists, but convincingly shows they were recruited by one, and probably two. She explores the FBI’s concerns that the trip to Afghanistan rightly aroused, and writes how the administration — anxious to declare a success in its war against terrorism — used new judicial rules of engagement made possible by anti-terrorism laws to frustrate the defense and score a political victory.
Temple-Raston first spots the working-class Lackawanna men — most of them fathers and husbands grounded in their Yemeni-American community, the nation’s second largest — meeting regularly at the home of Kamal Derwish. What he says appeals to them because the six — plus a seventh who would remain in Afghanistan to become a jihad terrorist — are spiritually and culturally conflicted.
The shadowy, Buffalo-born jihad recruiter raised in Saudi Arabia — and later killed by the CIA from a missile fired by a remote- controlled aircraft, in what Amnesty International called an “extrajudicial execution” — drew the men in, Temple- Raston writes, with an “intoxicating combination of worldliness and Islamic devotion.”
Later, Juma al-Dosari arrived from Indiana to re-enforce Derwish’s message. It’s only when the Lackawanna men arrive at the tightly-controlled and harshly-run terrorist training camp, where their money and passports are confiscated, Temple-Raston writes, that the full gravity of what they have got themselves into sinks in. For Sahim Alwan, the son of a steelworker and father of three who worked with disadvantaged youth, the romantic notion of joining with other Muslims to stand up against oppression in Chechyna evaporated when the target became the United States. He and the others knew they wanted out, Temple- Raston writes, after a list was passed around asking for volunteers on suicide missions.
It took an anonymous call to the FBI after the men returned home to reveal what had occurred. A cryptic phone message from Mukhtar al-Bakri overheard by agents led to the first of the arrests on his wedding night in Bahrain.
Their apprehensions led Bush to equate the six with the 9/11 suicide commandos. “One by one, we’re hunting the killers down,” Bush proclaimed, using a careless choice of words that betrayed a lack of concern for the judicial system to run its course.
The Lackawanna men wanted to initially argue their innocence, but in the end pleaded guilty to providing material support — spending money constituted doing so — since it had not been illegal to attend the terrorist training camp. It was better than being declared enemy combatants and deposited in Guantanamo, or facing the death penalty if, as also hinted, a treason offense was pursued.
In actuality, Temple-Raston wrote, the Lackawanna Six were being tried for what might have occurred, but hadn’t.
The author notes that she spent two years talking to people in Lackawanna, but if that’s the case she seems to have bypassed the larger city less than 5 miles away. Buffalo, Temple- Raston writes, is “20 miles and a bridge” from Canada. Pendleton, where terrorist Timothy McVeigh grew up, is placed six miles from downtown.
And the city is reduced to this lone description:
“Buffalo feels like a town that has lost its reason for existing. The streets are deserted. Storefronts boarded. Residents seem glum.”
The Buffalo News also comes in for criticism for its coverage, but Temple-Raston, who should know better, fails to distinguish between overheated commentaries that appeared — in the form of editorials, columns and an editorial cartoon — and news reports. In one instance, a quote is extracted from a News article to illustrate a point, but its meaning is altered by omitting the first three words.
These shortcomings aside, the book makes a valuable contribution in understanding the whole sorry episode of the Lackawanna Six. It also provides a textbook example of the jihad recruitment threat that does exist in this country, and is a warning about what can happen when a government makes a rush to judgment in pursuit of political gains.
Maybe one day more will be revealed about what happened from the Lackawanna Six themselves. For now, they share the same cell block in a special terrorism unit in Terre Haute, Ind.
Mark Sommer is a veteran News reporter.
The Jihad Next Door The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in the Age of Terror By Dina Temple-Raston PublicAffairs, 254 pages, $26
Morning Edition, September 10, 2007 · Five years after the arrest of six young men from Lackawanna, N.Y., questions remain about whether the so-called "homegrown terrorists" are as dangerous as authorities initially suggested. The Jihad Next Door, a book by NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, explores the subject. Temple-Raston discusses the case against the Lackawanna Six with Steve Inskeep.
The moral of this story is if you don’t attend Al Qaeda sponsored training camps, then you have nothing to worry about.
I can’t remember the exact number, but most of these were registered democrats.
#1 : Yahya Goba : arrested Saturday, September 14, 2002
#2 : Sahim Alwan : arrested Saturday, September 14, 2002
#3 : Shafal Mosed : arrested Saturday, September 14, 2002
#4 : Yasein Taher : arrested Saturday, September 14, 2002
#5 : Faysal Galab : arrested Saturday, September 14, 2002
#6 : Mukhtar al-Bakri : arrested in Bahrain as he was allegedly preparing for his arranged marriage.
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