Suspects Said to Be Awaiting Order to Attack in U.S.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Five Arab-American men charged today with operating an active Al Qaeda terrorist cell in western New York received weapons training in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 and had been sent back to the United States to await the order for an attack on American targets, federal law enforcement officials said today.

The five suspects, all of them born in the United States and of Yemeni descent, were arraigned today in Buffalo on federal charges of providing "material support" to terrorists. They were arrested on Friday night in raids on their homes and businesses in Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo that has a large Yemeni community and where the suspects lived within a few blocks of one another.

The arrests in New York suggest that, for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department may have detected and shut down an active Qaeda terrorist cell in the United States.

Law enforcement officials in Washington said they had no evidence to suggest that any attack by the group was imminent.

"We have not seen any plans of an imminent attack in western New York or elsewhere in the United States," the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said in announcing the arrests. But he added, "We do not fully know the intentions of those who are charged today."

Federal officials in Washington said they were tipped to the existence of the cell by two other members of the group, who were cooperating with the authorities.

Those two have said that members of the Lackawanna cell trained together in June 2001 at Al Farouk training camp near Kandahar, law enforcement officials said. The officials said the pair had reported that while they were at the camp, Osama bin Laden had visited, delivering a speech in which he repeated his familiar call for a holy war against the United States and Israel.

At a news conference at the Justice Department, Larry Thompson, deputy attorney general, said that the five men had received training at the camp in the use of "Russian assault rifles, handguns and long-range rifles."

Among the other young Muslim men who trained at Al Farouk in the summer of 2001 was John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan by American forces late last year and has since pleaded guilty to taking up arms against the United States as a soldier in the Taliban army.

As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Lindh agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department; federal officials would not comment today on whether information provided by Mr. Lindh helped lead investigators to the men arrested in upstate New York.

Mayor John Kuryak of Lackawanna said today that he was informed six months ago that the F.B.I. was conducting an investigation in the city, an old steel town southeast of Buffalo.

"When you first hear about it, you do get that initial shiver," Mr. Kuryak said. "You almost tell yourself, `Not in my backyard, not in my community.' "

But while federal authorities were reported to have had the city's large Yemeni community under scrutiny for several months, federal law enforcement officials in Washington said that the information that led to the arrests was received only in the last several days.

That information, apparently from the two cooperating witnesses, had been among the factors that led to the Bush administration's decision on Sept. 10 to raise the nationwide terrorist alert status to "orange," symbolizing a high risk of a terrorist attack, officials said.

Mr. Thompson cautioned today, however, that "the elevation of our status alert was made after considering a number of factors" and that the discovery of the Lackawanna cell had "not specifically" led to the nationwide warning on Tuesday, the day before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials said the initial investigation began on the basis of information from within the Muslim community of Lackawanna and nearby communities in western New York that people loyal to Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda might be living among them.

At the news conference in Washington, Mr. Thompson and other officials repeatedly praised the cooperation received from American Muslims in New York and elsewhere in the search for terrorists on American soil.

"I want to thank the Muslim community of Buffalo for their extraordinary cooperation," he said, offering few details on the nature of that cooperation and adding that the arrests "send an unambiguous message that we will crack down on terrorists where they hide."

The five men arrested on Friday were identified as Yahya Goba, Sahim Alwan, Shafal Mosed, Yasein Taher and Faysal Galab.

They were charged with violating a federal statute that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to a designated foreign terrorist organization like Al Qaeda. In this case, the men are charged with providing support in the form of their participation in training at the camp in Afghanistan.

In 1996, when the law was passed, Congress broadly defined material support to include almost anything of value except for medicine or religious materials — a list that included the provision of "personnel" or "training" to a foreign terrorist organization.

The Justice Department's description of the case today suggested that at least one other member of the Lackawanna cell was still at large. According to that account, eight members of the cell — the five men under arrest, the two cooperating witnesses, as well as another unidentified man — traveled together to Afghanistan last year.

Mr. Thompson hinted that other arrests of members of the cell might be imminent.

"I want to emphasize that the investigation of the Buffalo cell is ongoing," he said. "We are working to develop additional evidence and information about the activities of this cell."

They do have something working against them obviously. It's hard to keep terrorists on the farm once they get a taste of the USofA. Two of their own members turned them in.

Please read the article more carefully. ALL FIVE were "born in the USA"!!! Your premise is TOTALLY false, couldn't be more false! The 2 who turned them in only did so because they were trying to save their skins, probably after intense interrogation (torture) turned them to our side. Now they are singing like birds.

I can't stress how wrong you are and how important this new catch is. These are AMERICANS! We keep hearing that "most American Muslims" are loyal. I don't know about "most" but I am certain that at least some American Muslims are American first and are willing to fight and die for their country. But the importance of this new arrest is that we now have concrete evidence that the opposite is also true. At least some American Muslims, naturally born US citizens, are more loyal to Osama Bin Laden than they are to America. That couldn't be more frightening.

It won't succeed until the overwhelming majority of Muslims start cleaning out their trash and start shunning and condemning their radical nutjobs at least as vociferously as reformers railed against the corruption in the Catholic Church long ago. So far though, I don't see Calvins or Luthers or anything comparable to that. I don't see Muslims outraged against terrorism, I see the ones doing the speaking making excuses for terrorism, blaming others, and not themselves. I see muslims donating money without concern for where it ends up, trying to buy their way into heaven by tithing to anyone and anything called 'muslim,' or 'islamic.'

It didn't take Muslims to reform the Christian Church- it took Christians. Why is it that it takes Christians to reform Muslims? Where are the Muslims? Nowhere, until their poll numbers drop- and then the Saudis try to buy favor with PR firms.

Let's see some condemnation for Hamas and Hezbolah, Jamaat, etc, instead of 'buts.' Let's see some condemnation of suicide bombing, including condemnation of the clerics, imams, Saudi citizens, palestinians and Sadam Hussein, mullahs- the people who support it. Let's hear all of this without the 'but...'

Let's see some Muslims actually owning up for what their own kind do instead of blaming everyone else for bigotry and clustering together in the all-Muslim-all-the-time defense committee to protect ANY and ALL muslims, even those they KNOW are evil. So far only Moussauoi has the balls to admit he's at war with the US and Americans. Let's see the Muslims who are calling everyone else liars admit they have responsibilities to become a part of this culture instead of coming here to destroy it. Let's see some actually admit they have problems with telling the truth to nonmuslims. Let's see their Imams and Clerics condemn ALL lying. Let's see muslims condemn those clerics that preach hate, condemn those liars on talking head shows that try to speak in 'their' name. Let's see these people try to think like independent individuals rather than as mobs. Let's see these mosques and charities produce an accounting for the money they accept and money they spend like my church does instead of running a black market loan system whose real purpose is subterfuge, not charity. Let's see muslims - in numbers- condemn any group which is involved in visa fraud and identity theft, condemn those members of their community that have been nailed doing illegal things or illegally entering the country.

And above all, let's see some Muslims adopt a consistent spelling for their names, instead of trying to hide their identities in a multiplicity of names and misspellings, omissions and additions and calling it 'cultural.' If it is cultural, then it is a culture of lies.

Muslims are distrusted for very good reasons- so far too few of them have made any move to allay suspicions. Their mosques go on 'candlelight vigils' even as their members know full well some among them are illegal. They pretend to be American but go to rallies and wave palestinian flags. Their community clings together trying to insulate its members, even those they know are problems. They say nothing when they hear their fellow muslims spew hate. And if someone else hears it, they call out the lawyers to slay the messenger.

Citizenship is a two-way street, but their loyalty is to fellow muslims, not to fellow Americans. To hell with them and their pathetic and disgusting support of fascists like Arafat and tyrants like Hussein. To hell with their culture of superstitious, weak and irresponsible men and condescending attitudes towards women, to hell with their intolerance of liberty and to hell with their dreams of turning the entire planet into a third-world cesspit of repression. And to hell with their cowardly silence.

Your point in #21 is an excellent one. We have American born terrorists--not necessarily transplants from another country. That is particularly troubling.

I maintain that to evolve to the position of these terrorists, willing to kill innocent people,even if they are your own countrymen, means you must have a tremendous amount of hate inside. So, someone please remind me how participating in Islam, especially prostrating yourself in the direction of Mecca five times a day, makes one a member of a "religion of peace", and makes Islam a religion that God would even have a part in, and yet,results in the violence and terror Moslem fundamentalists have inflicted on the world for the past thirty years.

The Moslem worldview that we are infidels that need to be killed or subjugated to satisfy Allah can no longer be tolerated. It is not a matter of "diversity" or "multiculturalism"--it is a sickness like Nazism and totalitarianism, that has to be confronted and overcome.

Because of the awesome stakes raised by the potential use of weapons of mass murder, the future of the world literally depends on it.

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