A former University at Buffalo student from Lackawanna has safely returned to U.S. soil, nearly 18 months after she was reportedly tricked into traveling to Yemen and then kept there as part of her father's plan to pursue an arranged marriage that she rejected, according to federal prosecutors.
But she's not out of danger, they say.
While her father, Khaled Abughanem, and her brother, Waleed Abughanem, remain in federal custody, each facing a charge of conspiracy to kidnap a person in a foreign country, prosecutors point to what happened upon her arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on the morning of April 6 as proof of the continued threat she faces.
Federal agents, armed but wearing plain clothes, met her when her flight arrived so they could escort her to a safe location.
As the agents escorted her through the concourse, her sister ran toward her from behind.
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For a Lackawanna woman, the torrent of abuse at her family's hands started in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she was "dragged and pushed" out of her fiancé's home and forced to return to Lackawanna in September 2021, according to a federal complaint.
Airport surveillance photos show what happened next.
The sister grabbed her and began pulling her, shoving the agents who intervened. The federal agents ultimately separated her from her sister and took her to a secure location, according to a court filing from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Kruly and Maeve Huggins.
She "had barely touched down in the United States before a member of her family attempted to bring her back into the Abughanem family’s control and custody," according to their court filing.
Court documents in U.S. District Court in Buffalo do not name the woman reportedly kidnapped by her family, and have provided few details about her. Her location remains undisclosed.
But her return to the United States "only makes it easier for members of the defendants’ family to attempt to locate or contact her so that they may harm her or continue their obstruction campaign," Kruly and Huggins said in their court filing.
Her father and brother have been in custody since their arrests in February, when federal authorities accused the two of planning to traffic her to Yemen for the purposes of a forced marriage.
At a detention hearing last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. ordered both to remain locked up, saying he could find no reasonable conditions he could impose to reasonably assure their appearance at future proceedings and the safety of the community. But the judge said the two could ask him to reconsider his detention order if the woman was returned to the United States.
With her return, both defendants asked the judge to reconsider. A hearing on the father's request is scheduled for May 5.
At a court hearing Thursday, Schroeder ruled the brother's defense counsel did not make a sufficient case to warrant reconsidering the detention order.
Both face a sentence of up to life in prison, if convicted.
The government has urged the judge to retain the detention order for both men.
"The defendants’ decision to return (her) to the United States – after conspiring to hold her captive in a war-torn country for nearly 18 months – does nothing to alter the court’s sound decision," according to court papers filed the U.S. Attorney's Office.
U.S. District Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. expressed concern that Khaled Abughanem, 50, and his son, Waleed Abughanem, 32, posed a serious risk of flight and a threat to the safety of the woman, if they were released.
'Elaborate plot'
At a hearing last month, Huggins described the case as a conspiracy involving "an elaborate plot" that began in 2021 to kidnap the woman from her fiancé in Mexico. Then, she was held against her will at a Lackawanna home owned by her brother, Waleed. Her father and brother are accused of planning to "essentially disappear her by tricking her by ruse to travel first to Egypt, where then she was forced against her will to travel to Yemen," Huggins said.
While in Yemen, the woman had been held against her will for a significant period of time, restricted from free movement, access to her travel documents and from contacting others, Huggins said.
Those who restricted her included her father and brother, their spouses and other members of the family, she said.
She was "essentially being held as chattel for her family and brother to sell off to someone that they deem to be a suitable husband," Huggins said.
If she did not obey the wishes of her family, they threatened to kill her, Huggins said.
One such threat came from her father, even while he was locked up in the Cattaraugus County Jail as a federal defendant.
In a phone call with his wife and another daughter, recorded and monitored by the jail, Khaled Abughanem referred to his daughter as a despicable girl who "made the people laugh at us," according to a criminal complaint against him.
In the phone call, he asks why another daughter is not answering his phone calls promptly and discusses waiting for lawyers to figure out legal questions involving his son.
Later in the call, he stated, "I will wait for three days, three days, otherwise the one over there will be slaughtered," according to the complaint.
Authorities believe he was referring to his daughter, then in Yemen, so they added a charge against him – threat to retaliate against a witness, victim or an informant.
In court papers, Edmund Susman, a special agent for the Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service, said he began investigating this case in December as a task force officer to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force at the Buffalo Division. He said the investigation provided probable cause to believe her father and others have attempted to force her to marry a person not of her choosing and discussed killing her if she does not abide by her father's wishes.
In emails to Susman, the woman said her family has pressured her to recant her earlier statements to the FBI and pressured her not to speak to any FBI agent about anything, according to email transcripts in the court file.
"I know exactly what they truly want," she told the federal agent in an email, referring to her family. "But I will not do what they say. Because I know speaking about what happened either to you or any specified agent will not harm me."
Khaled Abughanem, 50, and her brother, Waleed Abughanem, 32, were arrested Feb. 14 on a charge of conspiracy to kidnap a person in a foreign country. Both remain in custody.
'Adores her and loves her'
Lawyers representing the two men could not be reached for comment on the woman's return to the United States.
But at last month's hearing, they rejected the government's portrayal of a kidnapping, the woman's stay in Yemen, and the father and brother's actions.
"We all have a thought that a person who is alleged or claimed to have been kidnapped is hidden away somewhere, some remote area in a basement where it's dark, given maybe a couple of pieces of bread a day, no communication with anybody, and wearing something over their eyes and being held against their will," said attorney Herbert Greenman, who represents the father. "And then I saw the facts of the case as I know them to be. I never heard of a kidnapping case where the complainant victim has unfettered access to go where she wants to go."
At last month's hearing, Greenman referred to photos that were not part of the publicly available court case file, which he said show "that she goes out, she is not limited to the house where she has been staying."
"Not only can she go where she wants to go, the doors are not locked," he said. "There is one person, a woman, who lives with her who can't watch her all of the time. She has, apparently, unfettered access to the internet with a computer, and she speaks with the FBI on a regular basis. I know she has access to a telephone, a cellphone, and she calls all kinds of different people. On one occasion, her mother was in my office when she called her mother on the cellphone. So, I would guess if she can call one person's cellphone, she can call anybody that she wants to talk with. That is not what I see as a person who is being held against their will."
Greenman said the father has been "painted with a very broad brush based upon allegations made by a young woman, a daughter, who said that he did all these bad things to her." The daughter, 21 or 22 years old, according to Greenman, "is doing what she wants to do to the exclusion of her best interest."
"She ran away from home, and where did she go? To Mexico, and didn't tell her parents," Greenman said.
Her parents have heard stories about how people prey on those who leave their country and who use another person's citizenship to gain their own citizenship, he said.
"One can imagine what a parent's reaction might be that the daughter has run away, gone to Mexico," he said. "She winds up in Yemen. Maybe the family thought this was in her best interest. I know she didn't. But now the family is in ruins."
Her father "adores her and loves her and wants only the best for her. He is doing the best that he can," Greenman said.
How the prosecution has portrayed Khaled Abughanem "is not the entire picture of what's going on here or the kind of father that he is and a father who could never do damage to his daughter," Greenman said.
At last month's detention hearing, Greenman asked the judge not to "accept every word that this woman has said, because that is really what the government has asked you to do."
When asked by the judge at the March hearing about the recorded jail phone call, Greenman said he had not listened to the recording and would get his own interpretation of what the father said.
"Again, not having heard it, it's a lot of hubris of a man who has been locked up in jail down in Cattaraugus County, away from his entire family, for weeks, who just wants to go home and let her come home," he said.