Pled guilty in plea bargainYemeni gets 10 years in U.S. jail [Archives:2003/692/Local News]

BUFFALO, N.Y. (Reuters) – One of six Yemeni-American men who admitted taking military-style training with al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday in a case the Bush administration said was a model for fighting its war on terrorism.
Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23, told FBI agents when he was arrested hours after his wedding in Bahrain last year that he and five acquaintances from the former steel town of Lackawanna near Buffalo, New York, on the Canadian border attended a camp in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in spring 2001.
Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23, told FBI agents when he was arrested hours after his wedding in Bahrain last year that he and five acquaintances from the former steel town of Lackawanna near Buffalo, New York, on the Canadian border attended a camp in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in spring 2001.
U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny sentenced al-Bakri, the youngest, to 10 years in prison and ordered that he be supervised for three years following his release. The judge also imposed a fine of $2,000 on al-Bakri, who wore casual clothes in court and at one point smiled nervously.
“By your own admission you broke the law,” the judge said. “You are not being punished for the actions of al Qaeda worldwide, not for what you think or the possibility that you may be dangerous or … simply for your association with others who may or may not be terrorists.”
Al-Bakri and the others pleaded guilty to giving “material support to a foreign terrorist organization” by providing “personnel” under a 1996 anti-terrorism law. Initially, all pleaded not guilty when they were indicted in October 2002.
Al-Bakri was the first to be sentenced and over the next two weeks, the other five were to receive their prison terms under a plea deal. They face between seven and 10 years.
Earlier this year, the men known as the “Lackawanna 6” struck plea bargains in exchange for lighter sentences. If they had gone to trial and been convicted, they faced a possible 25 years imprisonment.
The government's case against the men, pushed as part of the U.S. war on terrorism, was criticized by civil rights lawyers for putting Americans in jail for guilt by association with the militant Islamist group blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes and other attacks.
The six were never accused of involvement in the attacks or planning another one, or any violent crime. Prosecutors said they engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” after returning home to the United States after their visit to the al Farooq camp between April and June 2001.
Al-Bakri said in his May 19 plea agreement that he met personally with bin Laden. At the camp, he received instruction in using firearms, including a Kalishnikov rifle, 9mm handgun, M16 automatic rifle and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
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