Bin Larden benefitting from Tanzanite sales

Wall Street Journal | 11-16-01 | Robert Block and Daniel Pearl

[at bay]

Bought, Sold by Militants Near Mine, Tanzanite Ends Up at Mideast Souks By ROBERT BLOCK and DANIEL PEARL Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MERERANI, Tanzania -- In the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, miners with flashlights tied to their heads crawl hundreds of feet beneath the East African plain, searching for a purple-brown crystal that will turn into a blue gem called tanzanite.

Many of the rare stones chipped off by the spacemen, as the miners are called, find their way to display cases at Zales, QVC or Tiffany. But it's a long way from these dusty plains to U.S. jewelry stores, and the stones pass through many hands on their journey. Some of those hands, it is increasingly clear, belong to active supporters of Osama bin Laden.

A trade group called the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association denies that Mr. bin Laden's al Qaeda has any role in the tanzanite trade. But in the bars and cafes that dot the streets of Tanzania's mining community, the radical connections are no secret. According to miners and local residents, Muslim extremists loyal to Mr. bin Laden buy stones from miners and middlemen, smuggling them out of Tanzania to free-trade ports.

[at bay]

This is the beginning of a very long article, the upshoot of which is that Binny is benefitting from Tanzanite sales, which begs the question, why are we not organizing an immediate boycott? Any ideas along that line?

[MeekOneGOP]

Cross-link these articles.....

FBI reportedly interested in former state engineer Farid Adlouni