Lackawanna, NY “good boy” in Custody in Yemen

By Doug Hagmann —— Bio and Archives January 22, 2010

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Jaber A. ELBANEH, 43 year-old former resident of the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna, NY and one of the leaders of the “Lackawanna Six” group of young Yemeni terrorists is reportedly in custody again in Yemen, according to officials. In the spirit of cooperation with the Holder Justice Department and the Obama administration, he now wants to “lawyer up,” perhaps taking cues from 23-year-old Nigerian native Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Muslim terrorist who attempted to blow Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from the sky on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab, who was reportedly trained in Yemen by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was read his rights and granted access to a lawyer.

ELABNEH was indicted in absentia in a federal criminal complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, Buffalo, New York, charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda. He was added to the “FBI Most Wanted Terrorist” list with a $5 million reward offered for his arrest and conviction. Yemeni authorities have had ELBANEH in custody several times in the past seven years, but Yemen’s government has refused requests from the U.S. government to extradite him. A desire by the government of Yemen to collect on the reward, extensive government corruption in Yemen, along with the absence of any extradition treaty with the U.S., all seemed to have been factors in the twisted saga of ELBANAH. In a surreal court setting in 2008, ELBANEH managed to walk freely in and out of a Yemeni courtroom despite being a wanted terrorist. The government of Yemen convicted ELBANEH in 2002 for his participation with the 2002 Limburg oil tanker bombing that killed one person and injured at least a dozen others. He was also convicted in Yemen for other terror plots to attack oil installations inside that country. More...