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WASHINGTON (AP) - An American charged with being part of an al-Qaida terrorist cell in New York was probably among the 23 men who escaped from a Yemeni prison last week, an FBI official said Wednesday.
Jaber Elbaneh, 39, was charged in 2002 with participating in a sleeper cell based in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburb of Lackawanna by attending an al-Qaida training camp run by Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Yemeni-born Elbaneh was arrested in Yemen in 2003.
"Preliminary indications" are that Elbaneh escaped along with a man considered a mastermind of the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000, FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said. At least 13 escapees were convicted al-Qaida fighters, according to Interpol, the international police organization.
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