And the daughter of money launderers. “Lackawanna High student is killed in attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen,” by Dan Herbeck for the Buffalo News, September 18 (thanks to Jeffrey):
A Lackawanna High School student who traveled to Yemen to be married last month was one of the victims of a terrorist bombing Wednesday at the U. S. Embassy in Yemen, the woman’s school principal said.
Attackers armed with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and at least one suicide car bomb assaulted the compound in the Yemeni capital of Sana.
Officials listed the 16 people killed as six assailants, six guards and four civilians.
Susan Elbaneh, 18, was killed, along with her Yemeni husband, as they stood outside the embassy, family members said Wednesday. They were apparently there to do paperwork for the husband’s move to the U. S. when the attackers struck, said Elbaneh’s brother, Ahmed.
Lackawanna High School Principal Peter A. Hazzan said Susan had traveled to Yemen to be married over the summer.
“It looks like they were two young people in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Hazzan said.
He described the Elbaneh family as “very well known” in Lackawanna’s large Yemen-American community and active in the Guidance Mosque in Lackawanna.
A number of students related to Susan Elbaneh or her close friends left school early after learning of her death Wednesday morning, Hazzan said.
“Quite a few” parents also took their sons and daughters home early from Lackawanna Middle School after hearing the news, said Michael Jakubowski, the school’s principal.
Elbaneh had only two courses to complete to qualify to graduate from the high school, Hazzan said.
“Susan was a good student, an above-average student. She had spoken at one time about becoming a nurse,” the principal said. “This is such a tragedy.”
He added that Elbaneh had told school officials at the end of the past school year that she definitely planned to return to Lackawanna to complete her education after her wedding in Yemen.
Hazzan, who is of Palestinian descent and speaks fluent Arabic, said a number of girls who attend Lackawanna High School have gone to Yemen in recent years to be married and then have returned to complete school.
The Associated Press said Elbaneh had been in Yemen for a month for the arranged wedding Aug. 25.
School officials said Elbaneh was the daughter of Ali T. Elbaneh and the niece of Mohamed T. Albanna, two Yemeni-American community leaders who took plea deals in a case involving an unlicensed money-transmitting company that illegally sent at least $5.5 million to Yemen. Authorities never have alleged that the money was used for terrorist purposes.
In November 2006, U. S. District Judge William M. Skretny sentenced Ali T. Elbaneh to six months of home confinement for playing what federal prosecutors called a very minor role in the illegal business. Albanna received a five-year prison term.
Authorities said the dead woman also was related to Jaber Elbaneh, Mohamed Albanna’s nephew, a fugitive accused of traveling to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan with the “Lackawanna Six.”
The United States was angered when Jaber Elbaneh, 42, convicted in Yemen for planning attacks on oil installations, was allowed to go free while appealing his 10-year prison sentence.
He has since been taken back in custody, Yemeni officials say, but Yemen has refused U. S. requests that he be handed over for trial on charges of providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization. He is listed by the FBI as one of the world’s most wanted terrorists….