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F.B.I. Makes Sixth Arrest in Buffalo Inquiry
New York Times
| 9/15/02
| JOHN KIFNER and MARC SANTORA
Posted on 09/15/2002 11:04:25 PM PDT by kattracks
ACKAWANNA, N.Y., Sept 15 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a sixth man of Yemeni descent, family and friends said here tonight, in addition to the five young American citizens charged Saturday with providing "material support" for Qaeda terrorists.
The new suspect, whose family said he was arrested in the Gulf emirate of Bahrain as he prepared for his arranged marriage there, was identified as Mukhtar al-Bakri, who lived near the other young men in the Yemeni community of this fading steel town. A federal official confirmed that a sixth arrest had been made and said it was expected to be announced Monday.
Mr. Bakri's brother, Ahmed, and his sister, who declined to give her name, said they had been notified by the F.B.I. that their brother had been arrested. A family friend, Mohammed Adulo, said he had also learned that Mr. Bakri had been arrested in Bahrain and added that the F.B.I. spent nearly seven hours late Friday searching a house here where Mr. Bakri was thought to live. They removed videotapes and other items, Mr. Adulo said.
Asked why Mr. Bakri might have been arrested, the sister replied: "We don't know, we don't have any idea. We do not think he was involved."
The five men charged Saturday were accused of undergoing weapons training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 2001 — before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — and returning as what one federal agent called a "sleeper cell," awaiting an order for an attack on American targets.
"We have the key players in western New York," said Peter Ahearn, F.B.I. special agent in charge in Buffalo. "They worked together, they socialized together, they lived within blocks of each other. It's a trained group of individuals that were trained in Afghanistan. It's an Al Qaeda-trained cell."
But on the worn streets of this small, forlorn city just south of Buffalo, where the big Bethlehem and Republic steel mills once provided hot, hard work, members of the Yemeni community, which first arrived here in the 1920's to work in the mills, contended that their sons were regular guys, not terrorists.
Over and over, people on the streets, while wary of talking too much to the journalists who poured into town today, insisted that the five men charged Saturday were good family men, religious, and fond, above all, of playing soccer.
Those being held were identified as Shafal A. Mosed, 24; Yahya A. Goba, 25; Sahim A. Alwan, 29; Yasein A. Taher, 24; and Faysal H. Galab, 26.
In addition, the affidavit presented in court Saturday as the main part of the criminal complaint against the five mentioned "uncharged co-conspirators A, B and C." All were said to have lived here, but were now believed to be abroad.
The five had been interviewed for some months by the F.B.I. but had maintained they had gone only to Pakistan, and only for religious training. But, the affidavit said, one of three uncharged co-conspirators later recanted his story to an F.B.I. agent "outside the United States" and said the group had gone to the Qaeda camp near Kandahar. According to the affidavit, the F.B.I. then re-interviewed Mr. Alwan, who admitted they had gone to Afghanistan.
But the F.B.I. officials concede they found no weapons or explosives during their searches Friday night into Saturday morning. Officials also admit that they do not know exactly what it was that the group was supposed to do. "We do not fully know the intention of those who are charged," the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said at one of several news conferences on Saturday to announce the arrests. "The investigation is continuing.
"We have not seen any plan for an imminent attack in western New York or anywhere in the United States," he added.
What the five, all of whom were born here, had in common, according to the F.B.I. indictment and people in the community who knew them, was that they all went to Pakistan in the spring of 2001 to study Islamic religion and culture under the auspices of a group known in Arabic as Tablighi Jamaat.
The organization, whose name translates roughly as "Group of the Proselytizers," is described by Yemeni residents here as a kind of Islamic Jehovah's Witnesses, in that members often travel from place to place preaching a kind of revivalist message. It has an annual three-day gathering near Lahore, Pakistan, which draws one of the largest assemblies of Muslims after the annual hajj in Mecca. Last year the gathering was reported to have drawn a million people, and the group, founded in India in the 1920's, is regarded as one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world.
The group itself is not on any terrorist list. However, John Walker Lindh and Richard C. Reid, the accused shoe bomber, were reportedly drawn into terrorist activities through contact with Tablighi Jamaat.
Representatives from Tablighi Jamaat delivered a lecture at the local mosque, whose onion-shaped spires betray its origin as a Ukrainian Orthodox church of earlier immigrants, and that lecture apparently inspired the trip by the five men in custody and the three others mentioned in the F.B.I. affidavit.
Mr. Bakri too, went on what was originally said to be the trip to Pakistan to study religion, his friends and relatives said.
"I talked to them when they were thinking about going," said Mr. Adulo, the family friend. "His father didn't want him to go because he had a job and it was dangerous.
"When they went there, they wanted to study about their religion, but something else happened," he added. "They came back and they didn't look like they had studied their religion."
Mr. Bakri's sister added that he had gone to Pakistan not to join Al Qaeda, but to study religion and to see what it was like living there. She said that he did not like it in Pakistan and that he had spoken of his disdain for Osama bin Laden.
"He doesn't like Osama bin Laden," she said, "none of us do."
The young men were well known in the close-knit Yemeni community, which numbers about 1,000 in this city of 20,000. They graduated from Lackawanna High School, where several starred on the soccer team.
"They are like regular youth," said the mosque's imam, Abdulwahab Ziad. "Nice youth. We didn't hear anything bad about them. They were born here. They have children, wives, jobs."
"I am pretty sure they will say to them, `We are sorry,' too, sorry the same as in Florida," he added, referring to the three Muslim medical students whose car was searched in Florida last week. "After 17 hours they were sorry, and this case I think is the same."
TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: buffalocell; lackawana
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1
posted on
09/15/2002 11:04:25 PM PDT
by
kattracks
To: kattracks
Another registered Democrat!
To: kattracks
But on the worn streets of this small, forlorn city just south of Buffalo, where the big Bethlehem and Republic steel mills once provided hot, hard work, members of the Yemeni community, which first arrived here in the 1920's to work in the mills, contended that their sons were regular guys, not terrorists. I recall the same type of community reaction by the neighbors of Ted Bundy, and, apparently, by his many victims, until he revealed his true intentions, and then it was too late to stop the murders.
To: kattracks
>"He doesn't like Osama bin Laden," she said, "none of us do."
We are from France.
To: Paleo Conservative
LOL!
5
posted on
09/15/2002 11:15:21 PM PDT
by
Howlin
To: Dialup Llama
What did they think they were doing at Club bin Laden?
6
posted on
09/15/2002 11:16:15 PM PDT
by
Howlin
To: kattracks
In an investigative report carried by the "News" (February 13,1995), Mr. Kamran Khan, the well-known Pakistani journalist, brought to light for the first time the nexus between the TJ and the HUM and their role in supporting Islamic extremist movements in different countries.
He quoted unidentified office-bearers of the HUM as saying as follows: "Ours is basically a Sunni organisation close to the Deobandi school of thought. Our people are mostly impressed by the TJ. Most of our workers do come from the TJ. We regularly go to its annual meeting at Raiwind. Ours is a truly international network of genuine jehadi Muslims. We believe frontiers can never divide Muslims. They are one nation. They will remain a single entity.
"We try to go wherever our Muslim brothers are terrorised, without any monetary consideration. Our colleagues went and fought against oppressors in Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Burma, the Philippines and, of course, India.
"Although Pakistani members are not participating directly in anti-Government armed resistance in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan, many of the fighters in those Arab States had remained our colleagues during the Afghan war and we know one another very well. We are doing whatever we can to help them install Islamic governments in those States."
The report also quoted the office-bearers as claiming that among foreign volunteers trained by them in their training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan were 16 African-American Muslims from various cities of the US and that funds for their activities mostly came from Muslim businessmen of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UK.
The February 1998, issue of the "Newsline", a monthly of Pakistan, quoted workers of the TJ as saying that the TJ had many offices in the US, Russia, the Central Asian Republics, South Africa, Australia and France and that many members of the Chechen Cabinet, including the Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya, were workers of the TJ and participated in its proselytising activities. . One of them, merely identified as Khalil, said: " It is possible that France may become a Muslim state within my lifetime, due to the great momentum of Tablighi activity there. "
7
posted on
09/15/2002 11:36:19 PM PDT
by
kcvl
To: kattracks
ACTIVITIES IN THE US
Amongst the organisations in the USA with which the TJ is closely associated are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA).The President of the ISNA is Sheikh Abdullah Idris Ali, an American immigrant of Sudanese origin, who is also the Pesh Imam and Khatib of a mosque in New York.
The annual convention of the ISNA held at Columbus, Ohio, from September 11,1995, was addressed, amongst others, by Mr.Hamza Yusuf, an American citizen of Greek origin, who, after embracing Islam, had lived for six years in Mauritania to study Islam and then work as a TJ preacher, Mr. Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, the famous pop singer, who embraced Islam after coming into contact with the TJ in Pakistan, Dr.Saghir of Algeria, and Dr.Israr Ahmed, the Amir of the Tanzeem Islami of Pakistan and a worker of the TJ.
Addressing the convention, Dr. Israr Ahmed said: "The process of the revival of Islam in different parts of the world is real. A final show-down between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world, which has been captured by the Jews, would soon take place. The Gulf war was just a rehearsal for the coming conflict." He appealed to the Muslims of the world, including those in the USA, to prepare themselves for the coming conflict.
The convention was told that the ISNA had a US $ 100 million budget for spreading Islamic education in the US through the publication of text-books, setting-up of week-end Islamic schools and a weekly cable TV programme called "Onsight" which would be available in all the States of the US.
Amongst the alleged members of the TJ in the Muslim community in the US is Mr.Louis Fara Khan, the Black Muslim leader. The TJ operates in the US and the Caribbean directly through its own preachers deputed from Pakistan and also recruited from the Pakistani immigrant community in the US as well as through front organisations such as the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra founded in the 1980s under the leadership of Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, who generally lives in Pakistan, but travels frequently to the US and the Caribbean.
The annual report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 1998 issued by the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department states as follows of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra: "Seeks to purify Islam through violence. Members have purchased isolated rural compounds in North America to live communally, practise their faith and insulate themselves from Western culture. Fuqra members have attacked a variety of targets that they view as enemies of Islam, including Muslims they regard as heretics and Hindus. Attacks during the 1980s included assassinations and fire bombings across the US. Fuqra members in the US have been convicted of criminal violations, including murder and fraud."
In its preachings to the Pakistani immigrants in the US, the TJ has been stressing the importance of cultivating the African-American Muslims in order to counter the lobbying power of the Hindus and the Jewish people. The HUM, which works in tandem with the TJ, has been training African-American Muslims from the US in its training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Writing in the "Dawn" of January 12,1996, Mr. Ghani Eirabie said: " The Ummah must remember that winning over the black Muslims is not only a religious obligation, but also a selfish necessity. The votes of the black Muslims can give the immigrant Muslims the political clout they need at every stage to protect their vital interests. Likewise, outside Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Pakistan need to mobilise their effort, money and missionary skills to expand and consolidate the black Muslim community in the USA, not only for religious reasons, but also as a far-sighted investment in the black Muslims' immense potential as a credible lobby for Muslim causes, such as Palestine, Bosnia or Kashmir--offsetting, at least partially, the venal influence of the powerful India-Israel lobby."
Mr.Eirabie wanted the US Muslim community to prepare itself for the day in the second decade of the next millennium when, according to him, the Muslims would emerge as the second largest religious group in the US after the Christians.
8
posted on
09/15/2002 11:38:17 PM PDT
by
kcvl
To: kattracks
"Ninety-nine percent of the time, anybody going to Pakistan is going to hook up with the jamaat," said Ghali, an American citizen born in Lebanon. "You don't reserve a spot in the Hilton. You're part of a connected group, and that's the tablighi jamaat."
After graduating from an independent studies high school at 16, Lindh departed for Yemen in 1998 to study Arabic with his parents' blessing. He returned home in 1999, after 10 months in Yemen.
9
posted on
09/15/2002 11:42:20 PM PDT
by
kcvl
To: kattracks
10
posted on
09/15/2002 11:54:22 PM PDT
by
kcvl
To: kattracks
While the work of dispelling the troubling aura of foreignness and threat will require years, if not decades, Muslim advocacy groups have achieved success in forming concrete political contacts with the the current administration.
In February 1996, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton hosted an Eid-al-Fitr White House dinner which she proclaimed "an American event" both "historic and overdue." 19 Two-hundred Muslim men, women, and children attended the dinner to mark the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan. The Eid dinner represented the first time in American history that a First Lady played hostess to a Muslim celebration, and Muslims considered the event a significant public relations victory. "We have asked [other administrations] before for recognition of the Eid, but our request always went unanswered," said Khaled Saffuri of the American Muslim Council which sponsored an iftar (daily breaking of the fast) dinner with four U.S. congressmen during the month of fasting.
Mrs. Clinton's widely publicized trips to the Muslim world, including Pakistan, Turkey and Bosnia, have also won approval from American Muslims. 20 "Regardless of whether you agree with Clinton or not, you have to admit he has given Muslims more respect than they have ever received from a president," states Saffuri.
The recognition American Muslims have received from the Clinton administration stands in stark contrast to the Bush and Reagan administrations' condemnations of Islamic fundamentalism, which Muslims say triggered an anti-Muslim backlash. 21
11
posted on
09/15/2002 11:57:49 PM PDT
by
kcvl
To: kcvl
Ah, the 'DIE' holiday.
To: Dialup Llama
The New York Times
Jet Hijackers Are Backed by Pakistan, U.S. Contends
January 25, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 -- The United States now believes that a terrorist group supported by the Pakistani military was responsible for the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet last month, a judgment that puts Pakistan at risk of being placed on Washington's list of nations that support terrorism, Clinton administration officials said.
The new military leader of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was asked in a meeting with three administration officials in Islamabad last week to ban the group, Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, but the request was rebuffed, senior officials here said.
General Musharraf was also asked to exert pressure on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, with whom Pakistan has friendly relations, to expel Osama bin Laden, implicated in the bombings of two American Embassies in Africa, but no progress was made with this request either, the officials said.
The conclusion that a terrorist group supported by Pakistan carried out the hijacking comes as the White House must make a decision in coming weeks about whether President Clinton should visit Pakistan as part of his planned visit to India and Bangladesh at the end of March.
The visit to India is expected to be announced this week, with the option of a stop in Pakistan still open, pending some gestures of cooperation by Pakistan, officials said. Rejecting a presidential visit to Pakistan during a trip that includes a visit to India would be one of the severest snubs the White House could make, especially during the first presidential trip to the region in 21 years.
Administration officials said that they received information that Harkat ul-Mujahedeen was responsible for the hijacking after it became clearer who made arrangements for the escape of the hijackers.
Harkat ul-Mujahedeen is the new name for Harkat ul-Ansar, a radical Kashmiri nationalist group, which was put on the State Department's list of terrorist groups in 1997, officials said. After being put on the list, the group changed its name.
Administration officials declined to give details of precisely what they knew about the group's role in the hijacking that ended with 155 hostages freed in exchange for the release from prison of three members of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen by the Indian government.
"Indications came through intelligence channels, and I don't know anybody around here, including the skeptics, who don't find that credible," an official said of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen's involvement in the hijacking.
Karl F. Inderfurth, the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, who was one of the three officials who met with General Musharraf, told the general that the United States was concerned about the links between Harkat ul-Mujahedeen and his military and intelligence services, officials said.
The general was told that the United States believed that Harkat ul-Mujahedeen "was responsible for the hijacking and that United States believed the group operated openly and clandestinely" with the support of the military and intelligence services in Pakistan, a senior official said.
In response, General Musharraf said he would consider the administration's request to shut down the group, but he left the impression that no action would be taken soon, the official said.
The question of Pakistan's role in the hijacking has already inflamed relations between India and Pakistan, which both possess the nuclear bomb.
Shortly after the hijacking, India accused Pakistan of masterminding the plot and said it had evidence to back up its claims. But the Indian government has not yet produced the evidence.
Relations between the two countries have plummeted to their lowest point in decades, and the activities of the terrorist groups in Pakistan have heightened tensions.
How to deal with Pakistan since a coup on Oct. 12 ousted a civilian government has been the subject of a debate within the administration.
After the hijacking, the Indian government urged the Clinton administration to put Pakistan on the State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Among the nations currently on the list are Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Such a designation would effectively end all loans to Pakistan from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which some in the administration have argued would push already impoverished Pakistan into near collapse.
Even though Pakistan is believed by the Clinton administration to be harboring and supporting terrorist groups, there was substantial resistance from the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency to putting Pakistan on the list, in part because of past help that Pakistan gave the United States during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan, administration officials said.
The officials said that Harkat ul-Mujahedeen and another group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, were used by the Pakistani military during conflicts at the so-called Line of Control in Kashmir, which divides the areas held by India and Pakistan. Members of the groups would cross over the line, while the Pakistani army would create a disturbance at another point along the line, officials said, thus diverting the attention of the Indian army from the infiltrators.
The United States has known about the Harkat ul-Mujahedeen since, under its previous name, it claimed responsibility for kidnapping five Western tourists, including one American, in Kashmir in 1995.
The visit to Pakistan by Mr. Inderfurth, Michael Sheehan, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, and Donald Camp, the director for South Asian affairs at the National Security Council, was intended to lay out the administration's concerns about Pakistan on terrorism, the restoration of democracy and nuclear nonproliferation, and to hear the response, Mr. Inderfurth said.
Mr. Inderfurth went out of his way to say that he had not "warned" the Pakistanis about what kind of punishment would come if the military government did not heed the administration's concerns.
Rather, he appeared to hold out the possibility of a March stopover by President Clinton if the Pakistani government decided to take some steps against terrorism.
"We have said we cannot do business as usual with a military government in Pakistan," Mr. Inderfurth said. "Yet to influence Pakistan on democracy, terrorism, and nonproliferation we have to engage them. Our president is our best engager."
Last month, Mr. Clinton suggested that he wanted to personally try to solve the Kashmir conflict, which is the prime source of tension between India and Pakistan.
And in another gesture to the Pakistani government, Mr. Inderfurth refuted its contention that the United States had "tilted" towards India. "Both countries are important for the United States in their own right," he said. "We are not going to choose one over the other. In our view 'tilt' is a four-letter word that should be banned in any discussion of the south continent."
13
posted on
09/16/2002 12:05:27 AM PDT
by
kcvl
To: Dialup Llama
By B. Raman,
Director, Institute for Topical Studies
September 04, 2000
Hon'ble Members of the US Congress,
During President Clinton's visit to Pakistan in March, Gen. Musharraf had promised that he would personally visit Kandahar, the religious headquarters of the Taliban of Afghanistan, and persuade the Amir of the Taliban to moderate its policies, to respect human rights, particularly the rights of women, and to co-operate with the US in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Five months have passed since then, but he has done nothing of that sort.
On the contrary, he has been conceding one after the other the outrageous demands of Pakistan's pro-Taliban Islamic parties. Their demands are no different from those of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not satisfied with what he has already conceded, they are now demanding that there be no reservations for women in elected local bodies since, according to them, women "spread vulgarity"
And that there be a ban on Western and Western-assisted NGOs taking up issues relating to the rights of the non-Muslim minorities, women and children. They have also started a campaign to force Pakistani women working in Western and Western-assisted NGOs to resign and their parents to get their daughters married off so that their future husbands could prevent them from going astray!
Hon'ble Members of the Congress, has the time not come for a comprehensive hearing by both Houses of the Congress into the state of affairs in Pakistan so that the Noriegas of Pakistan and their religious mentors and accomplices could be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity?
With high respects and warm regards,
Yours sincerely,
B.Raman
14
posted on
09/16/2002 12:10:09 AM PDT
by
kcvl
Comment #15 Removed by Moderator
To: kcvl
BUMP
To: PsyOp; colorado tanker; Libertina; Pissed Off Janitor; happygrl; dennisw; SJackson; ProudEagle; ...
Urgent Read This Double PING!!!
To: Paleo Conservative
I wonder if Clinton has six pre-signed pardon forms?
To: kattracks
What is the FBI charging these guys with? Anyone know?
I hope for their sake, the FBI has something rock solid on this group and aren't just grabbing headline space on the anniversary of 9/11.
19
posted on
09/16/2002 2:48:32 AM PDT
by
Glenn
To: kattracks
...they all went to Pakistan in the spring of 2001 to study Islamic religion and culture under the auspices of a group known in Arabic as Tablighi Jamaat.
Let's see, they live in a poor run down old steel neighborhood, the don't have jobs, they go on a vacation.
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