Free Republic

Note: Photos included. FOCUS:TERRORISM SNIPPET: "Faysal H. Galab, the first to take a plea deal, received the shortest sentence, seven years, and is now out of federal custody and living in the Detroit area under his own name. Shafal A. Mosed is out of prison and in a federal halfway house in Rochester working as a day laborer. He plans to move back to Lackawanna and rejoin his wife and child in September, according to members of the Yemenite community in Lackawanna. His brother, who refused to speak about Mosed’s upcoming return, pointed out that Galab has managed to succeed...

A search for answers in the case against the Lackawanna SixBy 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...

NEW YORK -- The last member of a group of Yemeni-American men from western New York sought by U.S. authorities for attending an al-Qaeda training camp has been taken into custody in Yemen, according to a newspaper report. Jaber Elbaneh was being held by Yemeni authorities, and negotiations are under way for extradition, The New York Times reported in a story for Thursday editions, citing unidentified officials in Yemen and the United States. Six men from Lackawanna pleaded guilty last year to aiding a terrorist organization by attending the camp in Afghanistan in 2001. In December, 31-year-old Sahim Alwan was...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A Yemeni-American who attended an Al Qaeda training camp and met Osama Bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks was sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday for providing material support to Al Qaeda. Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23, was the first defendant sentenced in the Lackawanna Six case held up by the Bush administration as a model in prosecuting terror suspects. U.S. Attorney Michael Battle said the case would provide precedent for what had been a little-used federal law that prohibits giving money, weapons or other tangible support to foreign groups deemed terrorist. But even as al-Bakri was...

Overviews of Al-Bakri offer sharp contrast By CHARITY VOGEL and DAN HERBECK News Staff Reporters 9/17/2002 Those who know Mukhtar al-Bakri say he is a man who was turning his life around. The 22-year-old Yemenite-American, a former Lackawanna High School student, had no money and no steady job for more than a year, but he traveled to the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain to meet and marry a Muslim woman in an arranged wedding, his family members said Monday. Federal agents, however, have a grimmer view of what al-Bakri was up to in Bahrain. Based on a phone call from...