U.S. Describes Evidence to Back Detention of Suspects
by Susan Schmidt, Washington Post
Some of the Buffalo-area men accused of being part of an al Qaeda sleeper cell had tapes and documents in their homes that called for suicide operations against Islam’s “enemies,” federal prosecutors contended in court papers filed late yesterday.
“Martyrdom or self-sacrifice operations are those performed by one or more people against enemies far outstripping them in numbers and equipment,” said a document recovered in a Sept. 25 search of the Hamburg, N.Y, apartment used by Yasein Taher. “The form this usually takes nowadays is to wire up one’s body, or a vehicle or suitcase with explosives, and then to enter into a conglomeration of the enemy, or in their vital facilities, and to detonate in an appropriate place there in order to cause the maximum losses in enemy ranks.”
The government is seeking to hold without bail the five Yemeni Americans arrested earlier this month in the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna, N.Y., on charges they provided support to terrorists. A sixth man accused of being part of the cell is in U.S. custody overseas.
U.S. Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., who last week held three days of hearings on the men’s detention and asked for additional information, has indicated he will rule by Oct. 3.
Two of the men arrested in Lackawanna, Sahim Alwan and Yahya Goba, had audiotapes in their apartments that called for jihad and martyrdom. One of Alwan’s tapes contains a lecture by a radical Islamic cleric who calls for “fighting the West and invading Europe and America with Islam,” according to the government’s affidavit in support of continued detention for the men.
Additionally, the government said the sixth man, Mukhtar Al-Bakri, who is detained in Bahrain, has told the FBI that when he and the others were in an al Qaeda training camp in the summer of 2001, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “told them in unequivocal terms that there ‘is going to be a fight against Americans.’ ” Al-Bakri further told the FBI, according to the government, that he was being trained for the purpose of fighting Americans.
Until now, the government has released little information about the links it maintains the suspects have to al Qaeda. Prosecutors have said the men received weapons training at a camp in Afghanistan, and have cited a cryptic e-mail Al-Bakri sent this summer from Bahrain to his co-defendants in Lackawanna. In it he wrote that the “next meal will be very big, no one will be able to withstand it.”
Lawyers for the Lackawanna men have denied they are terrorists and say their attendance at the training camp does not constitute material support for al Qaeda. Families and friends have portrayed the defendants -- U.S. citizens from a Yemeni enclave -- as religious young men who would not be involved in anti-American violence.
Most of their lawyers could not be reached for comment yesterday. James Harrington, the attorney for Alwan, said that he had not yet seen the government’s filing, but noted that his client agreed to a voluntary search of his home. He has argued that Alwan was disturbed by the militancy of the training camp and left after only 10 days.
The government also said searches of the men’s homes had turned up weapons and false identification and credit cards. A registered pistol and a rifle were recovered from a residence in New York used by Al-Bakri, prosecutors said. One of the men, Shafal Mosed, had two different Social Security cards in his possession, the government said, along with 11 credit cards bearing six different names.