U.S. officials said on Saturday they had disrupted a "terrorist cell" on American soil, arresting five U.S. citizens who attended an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks. Officials said, U.S. citizens of Yemeni descent, received training in the use of assault rifles, handguns and other weapons while attending the camp in June 2001. All left the camp before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Officials said they had no information that the defendants may have been plotting specific terror attacks.

The charges of providing, attempting to provide and conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

BIN LADEN VISITS TRAINING CAMP

According to the sources, while the defendants were at the camp, bin Laden delivered a speech instructing the approximately 200 trainees in anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment and the doctrines of the extremist Muslim network.

The training camp, located near Kandahar, was the same camp attended by John Walker Lindh, 21, the American Taliban fighter captured in Afghanistan last year who pleaded guilty in a plea deal with prosecutors in July.

Those arrested and charged were Faysal Galab, 26; Sahim Alwan, 29; Yahya Goba, 25; Shafal Mosed, 24; and Yasein Taher, 24, all residents of Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo.

The sources added that authorities have arrested all known individuals involved in the al Qaeda-trained cell in the United States. Two other associates of the men were believed to be in Yemen.

Court papers mentioned three un-indicted co-conspirators, also from Lackawanna, who were not named.

Their hands and feet in shackles, the five were brought into the Buffalo court to be arraigned and assigned defence lawyers. Four of them have received a public defender, while the fifth hired his own.

Goba asked to swear in on the Koran rather than the Bible and when the court could not find one, officials dispensed with the swearing in formalities.

The five were taken to an immigration detention centre in Batavia, New York, 30 miles (50 km) east of Buffalo. They will return to court on Wednesday.

At a news conference in Buffalo, the FBI displayed photographs of the men and issued an appeal to anyone who knew them and had information about their activities to come forward.

FBI special agent Peter Ahearn declined to discuss how the agency had been led to the suspects, but said: "The Muslim community was involved in this from the beginning."

The arrests have been overshadowed by the recent capture in Pakistan of Ramzi Binalshibh, a key al Qaeda member accused of helping plan the September 11 attacks.

PHOTO CAPTION

An FBI agent and a policeman remove evidence from a home during a raid in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, on September 13. REUTERS/Stringer