Wanted US man among Yemen prison escapees

WASHINGTON - A US citizen with a US$5 million bounty on his head for alleged links to an al Qaeda cell in New York was among the 23 prisoners who escaped from a Yemeni prison last week.

"Jaber Elbaneh was a member of the (New York) cell and was among those who escaped from prison in Yemen," a US official told Reuters.

In May 2003, US prosecutors charged Elbaneh with conspiring with six other Yemeni-American men who admitted they were trained in April 2001 at a camp in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The cell was dubbed "Lackawanna 6" after their home town in New York.

- REUTERS