Lackawanna-Six

Terror links in America

Buffalo, NY Businessman & Leader of Yemeni Community Enters Guilty Plea

By Douglas J. Hagmann

Mohamed T. ALBANNA, 167 Lehigh Street, Lackawanna, NY. a prominent member of Lackawanna's Yemeni community and vocal proponent of the innocence of the "Lackawanna-Six," along with two of his relatives admitted in U.S. District Court last Friday that they ran an unlicensed money-transfer business.

--Guilty of operating illegal money transfer business: More than $6.7 million was actually sent from Buffalo to Yemen between 1999 and 2002, according to government investigators

--Yemeni cleric from New York City, Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad, sentenced to 75 years in prison for conspiring to support al-Qaeda and HAMAS, received funds funneled through Albanna's business. The sender: Former Lackawanna Imam Abdulwahab Ziad.

--"Lackawanna Six terrorist cell" member Yaya Goba was scheduled to testify that he used Albanna's money transfer business to send money to Kamal Derwish, an al-Qaeda operative killed by a CIA missile strike in 2002 in Yemen.

--Court records indicate Mohamed T. Albanna and Queen City Cigarettes & Candy still defendants in the One-Trillion Dollar civil suit filed by some family members of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.