The Jihad Next Door : The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror

New York: Public Affairs, 2007. First Edition. Cloth. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Type: Book This is the compelling story of America's first home-grown terrorist cell traces six young Yemeni Americans from a New York state backwater to an Al-Qaeda training camp. They called themselves the Arabian Knights, just a gang of high schoolers who spray-painted the name onto the back of their jackets, Arab hip hop asserting itself in the grimy side streets of Lackawanna - a depressed neighbourhood in a run-down steel town in upper New York state. Then, in Spring of 2001, they became something more. A handful of Arabian Knights decided to go on an adventure. They told their parents they were travelling to Pakistan to study at a madrassa. The elders in the neighbourhood saw their new interest in Islam as a positive step, an alternative to hanging around a town where job prospects - any prospects - were so few. But their adventure became more dramatic. There was a clandestine border crossing into Afghanistan, stays in jihadi guesthouses and then training at an infamous Al-Qaeda camp outside Kandahar. Then, just weeks after the last of the Arabian Knights returned to Lackawanna, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. What had been a lark, a religious curiosity, took on a new meaning. Suddenly, six guys from Lackawanna became much more. To former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Lackawanna Six were the country's first home-grown Islamic terror cell. The city of Lackawanna and local parents were shocked. They couldn't believe that Al-Qaeda could claim any of their own. Dina Temple-Raston has retraced their journey, discovered what lured them into an Al-Qaeda camp and a face-to-face meeting with Osama bin Laden, and tracks their return to the US. Some of the men were just grateful to be home. Others considered the world through newly radicalized eyes288pp..