U.S. Arrests Al Qaeda Cell In NY

The FBI has arrested what appears to be an active al Qaeda cell inside the United States, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart in an exclusive report. Agents detained five men in a Buffalo, N.Y. surburb - all graduates of Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Authorities are also looking for possibly two other men overseas who were the group's handlers. Another member of the cell has been turned over to the United States by a foreign power.

In a separate arrest across the ocean, Ramzi Binalshibh, a high-profile fugitive al Qaeda member who is believed to have trained with the 9/11 hijackers, was captured in Pakistan nearly a year after he became one of America's top terror targets, U.S. officials said.

The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Binalshibh was captured earlier this week in a joint raid by Pakistani forces and U.S. intelligence officers in the southern coastal city of Karachi. The raid ended in a deadly shootout.

Sources tell CBS News the discovery of the New York-based cell -- and a recent spike in their overseas and internal communications -- was largely responsible for President Bush deciding to go to alert Condition Orange earlier this week. It is not known whether the cell had identified a specific target in the United States, or how close they were to acting.

All of the Buffalo suspects are U.S. citizens of Yemini descent. Four were born in the U.S, while the fifth was naturalized. All live within a block of each other in a Buffalo surburb known as Lackawanna. And all attended the same mosque. The cell's ringleader, also a U.S. citizen of Yemini background, is believed to be in Yemen and outside of U.S. reach for the moment.

The five Buffalo suspects will apparently be charged with providing material support and resources to terrorists. This apparently follows a debate within the White House itself over whether to treat the men as criminal defendants, or as nonmilitary combatants with no charges and no access to an attorney.

Sources say the men attended Al Qaeda camps prior to 9/11 and then returned to the United States. There is no indication they had any support role in that attack, or even had fore knowledge it would take place.

One senior government official said one of the men arrested in Buffalo is linked to Omar al-Farouq, a senior al Qaeda figure captured in Asia this summer, who has provided his interrogators specific information suggesting that terror cells in the region were planning attacks on U.S. facilities, the sources said.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Justice Department plans to charge the men with providing material support and resources to terrorists.

In a separate development, a suspected organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks was captured in Pakistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

U.S. officials say the newly-detained suspect, Binalshibh, belonged to a Hamburg-based cell led by the late Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian suspected of leading the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Binalshibh, 30, was born in Yemen. He was being sought by the German government for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The arrest of Binalshibh was a major coup for U.S. authorities who have searched for him for months. Officials said he was not wounded during the capture.

Before Sept. 11, Binalshibh was frustrated in his attempts to receive a visa to enter the United States in 2000, where, U.S. officials allege, he planned to join the other 19 hijackers. Instead, he provided financial support to the other hijackers, officials said.

He is considered an aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings that left nearly 3,000 dead, officials said. Mohammed is still at large.

To catch him, police commandos fought a pitched battle with al Qaeda suspects holed up in an apartment Wednesday in Karachi, with combat spilling out onto adjoining rooftops, officials said. They said that two suspects were killed and several more captured in the fighting, as Pakistan stepped up pressure on the remnants of the terrorist movement a year after it made its mark on the world.

At least six officers were wounded when police stormed the top-floor apartment and the rooftop where the gunmen held out against hundreds of troops in the street and on the roofs of nearby apartment blocks, they said. Two of the wounded were reported in critical condition.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN in an interview Friday that one Egyptian, one Saudi and eight Yemenis were captured in the raid.

U.S. personnel were not hurt in the raid, American officials said.

According to the U.S. grand jury indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, Binalshibh applied four times for a visa to enter the United States from May to October 2000, but was rebuffed each time.

After being denied a visa for the third time, Binalshibh allegedly began funneling money to associates inside the United States. He wired money to Moussaoui, to at least two hijackers and to a Florida flight school at which one of the hijackers was training, the indictment said.

Authorities believe Binalshibh fled Germany for Pakistan before Sept. 11. German authorities had issued an international arrest warrant for Binalshibh, whose whereabouts until now were unknown.

A correspondent for the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera claimed to have interviewed Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, at a secret location in Pakistan. The men admitted being central figures in the Sept. 11 plot, and claimed the U.S. Congress had been another target that day.

In Thursday's broadcast, al-Jazeera aired audio excerpts of the interview, in which two male voices attributed to Mohammed and Binalshibh revealed details about the buildup to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The voice purported to be Binalshibh's said the hijackers were instructed to take over the planes 15 minutes after takeoff. "That was the best time, and they were very brave," he said.

Two other members of the Hamburg cell, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, died in the suicide hijackings. Two additional members of the Hamburg cell did not take part in the hijackings and are still at large.

He also appeared in a videotape, released by the Justice Department several months ago, that was recovered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the home of al Qaeda's slain military chief, Mohammed Atef.