This is all I could find on a google search on "Fuqra":
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/news1/an011222-07.html
Terror Probe Leads To Rural Va. Hamlet
AP, Dec. 21, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ []
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RED HOUSE, Va. (AP) - Except for a metallic green ''Muslims of America'' sign at the entrance, there's little to distinguish the cluster of trailer homes near a country crossroads.
Yet federal authorities say the fenced compound was the home of a terrorist cell - not connected to the Sept. 11 attacks but instead to al-Fuqra, an obscure Muslim sect with a history of violence in the United States.
The path of federal authorities' investigation of the group shows how the response to any hint of terrorist activity has shifted from watchful waiting to quick arrest and prosecution.
Before Sept. 11, the compound, which houses about 20 families, had been under surveillance for three years because of suspicion that residents were stockpiling machine guns, said Thomas Gallagher, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
A week after the attacks on New York and Washington, two residents of the compound were charged with purchasing pistols illegally. Vincente Rafael Pierre, 45, and his wife, Traci Elaine Upshur, 37, were both convicted. A third resident, Bilal Adullah Ben Benu, 27, faces charges including illegally transporting ammunition for AK-47 automatic rifles.
The story is full of unanswered questions, beyond the central question of why alleged terrorists would set up housekeeping in an isolated hamlet in the flat farm country of central Virginia.
Residents of the compound, mostly black Muslims, will say little beyond proclaiming their innocence and complaining that they are victims of religious and racial prejudice.
Pierre said in court that al-Fuqra was a ''phantom, nonexistent organization.''
Prosecutors decline to say what kind of terrorist activity they suspect. Instead they cite al-Fuqra's history and warn that some of the compound's residents are dangerous.
Al-Fuqra, which means ''the impoverished'' in Arabic, was founded in Brooklyn, N.Y., 20 years ago by a Pakistani cleric, Shaykh Mubarik Ali Gilani. The group ''seeks to Islamism', CAPTION, 'Additional Information', SNAPX, '15', STICKY, TIMEOUT, '6000');">purify Islam through violence,'' according to a 1998 State Department report. Its members are suspected in at least 17 bombings and 12 murders, Gallagher said.
In 1992, Colorado's attorney general charged al-Fuqra members in Buena Vista, Colo., with firebombing a Hare Krishna temple in 1984 and conspiracy to murder a Muslim cleric in 1990. The cleric, Sheik Rashad Khalifa of Tucson, Ariz., was killed after receiving death threats over his interpretation of the Quran.
[...]
Members of the group also bilked the state of more than $355,000 through false workers compensation claims, and used the money to buy a 100-acre mountain compound in Buena Vista, Colo., Wamsley said. [...]
Pierre's lawyer, Thomas Wray, said his client was wrongly swept up in the rush to capture potential terrorists.
''It bothers me that they'd go after someone when their evidence wasn't sufficient,'' Wray said.
Pierre said al-Fuqra is ''just a figment of someone's imagination due to their ignorance of the Arabic language or perhaps due to their hate or prejudice'' toward Islam. [...]
''There's a general chill in the Muslim community right now,'' said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic advocacy group based in Washington.
Hooper said Muslims feel threatened when hundreds of people have been detained and police view entire communities as suspects instead of focusing on individual crimes.
But Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, said cases such as that of al-Fuqra show the importance of good surveillance of potential terrorists.
''These incidents indicate there are members of terrorist cells in America still,'' diGenova said.
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