Free Republic

(NOTE: Basilan Provincial Information Officer, Christopher Puno was present in the ward at Basilan Community Hospital when I interviewed Elmina Abdul, less than two weeks prior to her death.) ISABELA CITY, Basilan – Elmina Abdul, widow of one of the Abu Sayyaf co-founders, Edwin Angeles, died in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, March 30. Ten days before she died, she talked with this writer in confidence while lying on her deathbed at Basilan Community Hospital. I was the last, if not the only reporter, to ever talk with her. Elmina was Edwin’s fourth and last wife. She met him in...

Queen City Cigarettes & Candy, a Clinton Street warehouse owned by food broker Mohamed T. Albanna, is one element of investigators' picture of a money-transmitting business that sent large sums to Yemen. A leader of Lackawanna's Yemeni-American community and two other men were in custody today on charges they operated an illegal money-transmitting business that sent funds from Western New York to Yemen. Mohamed T. Albanna, vice president of the American Muslim Council of Western New York and a frequent spokesman for the defendants known as the "Lackawanna Six," appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott on Tuesday after...