Lackawanna Six Bail Ruling Expected

Yasein Taher was voted "friendliest" senior at Lackawanna High School in 1996. Faysal Galab, in his lawyer's words, "is a loyal American who loves his country."

Both men are among six Americans of Yemeni descent accused of participating in an al Qaeda sleeper cell awaiting orders from Osama bin Laden's terror network to carry out an assault within U.S. borders.

U.S. Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. must now decide which portrait of the men to believe at their bail hearing scheduled Tuesday: federal prosecutors who want the six behind bars or defense attorneys who argue they are no threat.

"It's not a black-and-white situation, it's not a no-brainer," Schroeder said in court last week.

If convicted, the men could get up to 15 years in prison under a 1996 federal law that prohibits giving money, weapons or other tangible support to foreign groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations.

Mere attendance at an al Qaeda camp is a crime, prosecutor William Hochul Jr. said, arguing that that "I don't feel the constitutionality of the act is at issue" in deciding bail.

If the men are granted bail, U.S. Attorney Michael Battle warned, "it can be reasonably concluded that the defendants ... would undertake the desperate, violent and ultimate acts called for in their training" at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in spring 2001.

Defense lawyers say the men, who were arrested days after the Sept. 11 anniversary, are victims of misinformation who pose no danger and won't flee. The families of Galab, 26, Taher, 25, Shafal Mosed, 24, Yahya Goba, 25, Sahim Alwan, 29, and Mukhtar al-Bakri, 22, have pledged more than $2 million worth of property to guarantee they attend their trial.

While acknowledging it had no evidence of an imminent threat posed by the six men, the government said enough signals were gathered via wiretaps, informants and seized tapes and documents defending suicide missions and holy war to suggest they represented a clear threat.

Similar surveillance in recent months also has led to a string of arrests in Detroit, Seattle and Portland, Ore., of mostly U.S. citizens suspected of having ties to al Qaeda.

The "Lackawanna Six" say they went to Pakistan in spring 2001 to pursue religious training. But two of them, Alwan and al-Bakri, said the group also attended a training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where they heard bin Laden say there is "going to be a fight against Americans," according to prosecutors.

By Ben Dobbin