Some of the six men convicted in one of the nation's first major terror related cases following the Sept. 11 attacks have sought special government witness protection for their testimony against other terror suspects in prosecutions that followed.
Two members of the "Lackawanna Six," charged for attending an al-Qaida training camp in 2001, asked to enter the government's witness protection program as a reward for testifying at a Guantanamo Bay trial last fall. They and a third who testified at the same trial have since vanished from the federal Bureau of Prisons public database, one indication they got their wish.
In prison, protected inmates serve their time under aliases and in specialty units. After prison, the witness protection program gives participants a new identity, living expenses and medical care.
In the years since their arrests, within days of the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, federal authorities have said members of the group have been valuable witnesses -- not for their direct knowledge of terror plots but for their ability to describe al-Qaida training from personal experience.
The most active government witness among the group, 32-year-old Yahya Goba, has been absent from the Bureau of Prisons site for more than two years as he's testified in several trials, including that of Jose Padilla in Miami in 2007.
Two co-defendants, Sahim Alwan, 36, and Yasein Taher, 31, have not appeared on the bureau's inmate locator since they and Goba testified against an Osama bin Laden associate at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base a year ago.
Taher had been scheduled for a Sept. 1, 2009 release before his name disappeared from the site. His attorney, Rodney Personius, acknowledged that Taher was in protective status as he finished out his prison term but declined to say whether he'd opted to continue in the U.S. Marshal-run Witness Protection Program. 
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