Bin Laden announced US battles at training camp

Osama bin Laden declared before September 11 that there “is going to be a fight against Americans”, at an Afghan training camp attended by suspected members of a New York terror cell, prosecutors said in court papers.

The papers, in the case involving six suspected terrorists in Lackawanna, said none of the men could give details regarding any of the mosques or schools that they visited for what they said was religious training in Pakistan.

The government documents, filed in federal court in Buffalo, New York, ask that the six men continue to be held without bail.

According to prosecutors, the men went to the Al Farooq training camp in the spring of 2001 where “bin Laden told them in unequivocal terms that there ‘is going to be a fight against Americans’.”

When one of the six, Mukhtar al-Bakri, asked the trainers at the camp who he was going to fight, “they would say Americans”, said the court papers.

In separate court papers, the detainees’ lawyers describe the six men as victims of misinformation who posed no danger.

All deny al Qaida membership. US Magistrate H Kenneth Schroeder Jr said he would make his decision on bail by Thursday.

John Molloy, Al-Bakri’s lawyer, said his client didn’t accept any of what he was told at the camp in Afghanistan. ”There was no showing in the government’s proffer that Mr Al-Bakri bought into any of the propaganda or was willing or able to put any of the training offered into practice.”

James Harrington, a lawyer for another suspect, Sahim Alwan, said his client acknowledged getting some instruction in the use of a Kalashnikov rifle at the training camp, but never fired live ammunition.

“Mr Alwan stated that he realised immediately that he did not belong at the camp and wanted to leave it,” Harrington said.

But according to the government, “the only inference any reasonable person can draw from the totality of the evidence in this case is the defendants individually and collectively pose a risk to the safety of the community and therefore should be detained”.

“Why do a group of young Yemeni Americans, born and brought up in Lackawanna, New York, and, in the majority of cases married with children, suddenly leave their otherwise unremarkable lives to spend six to seven weeks in a terrorist training camp, then quietly slip back into roles of middle-class Americans?” the government’s filing asked.

The men, all in their 20s, lived just blocks from each other in Lackawanna, five miles south of Buffalo.

They were arrested on September 13, suspected of being part of a hidden terrorist cell. They are charged with providing support to a foreign terrorist organisation.

According to the government, “al-Bakri acknowledged to the FBI that, when he was at the camp, he was a member of al Qaida”.

“He said the teachers at the camp were al Qaida” and that he believed an unnamed co-conspirator also was a member of al Qaida, according to the papers.

An assistant US attorney said in an affidavit that investigators found a cassette tape in the Lackawanna home of Alwan that says “American presidents (Bill) Clinton and (George) Bush are reportedly ‘donkeys for the Jews to ride’.”

Another tape found at Alwan’s residence “contains pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli propaganda”, says the affidavit.

A third defendant, Shafal Mosed, allegedly had two social security cards in different names in his wallet when he was arrested and had 11 credit cards bearing six different names.

The government said in its filing that three of the six suspected members of the terror cell had used aliases in recent years.

The government’s suspicions that the men had possibly attended a military training camp in Afghanistan run by bin Laden’s al Qaida network first surfaced in mid-June 2001 but there was insufficient evidence to arrest them, assistant US attorney William Hochul wrote in his affidavit.

Authorities began keeping some of the men under round-the-clock surveillance on and off over the next 15 months and believe the men noticed they were being watched, Hochul said.

If they did, “such observations would obviously have discouraged the defendants from committing any terrorist attacks that may have been planned”, Hochul argued.

Alwan’s lawyer said his client had been in contact with an FBI agent for more than a year and didn’t flee, try to hide any so-called “evidence” or warn the others when he knew their arrests were likely.

All six defence lawyers argued their clients posed no flight risk and deserved bail.