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Here is some of the current shame of Belgium: Blood Diamonds Belgium Accused Continuing Sale of Unita Diamonds Panafrican News Agency April 24, 2001 The Belgian mining marketing town of Antwerp has continued to buy diamonds from the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), according to a secret report released by the General Intelligence Service. The Belgian press on Monday quoted the report, which indicated that the sale of "blood diamonds" had continued despite the institution of a certificate of origin for diamonds originating from the civil war torn Angola. The head of the working group...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Thieves emptied more than 100 vaults at a diamond trading center in what officials said might be the largest theft ever in Antwerp, the gem trading capital of the world. Authorities were still trying Tuesday to determine the amount of the loss from the cellar of a building that houses dozens of gem trading companies in a city that has been a center of the trade in precious stones since the 16th century. The thieves bypassed heavy security to steal the diamonds from 123 of 160 vaults in the cellar of the Antwerp Diamond Center over the...

The world is full of bad people doing bad things. There are regimes that persecute Christians, Buddhists and others. There are double-crossing generals, arms and drug traffickers, treacherous diplomats and false fronts. There are double agents and blackmailed politicians. There is blood in the streets, revolution, war and hatred in today's world. You wouldn't know it from looking out a suburban window in America. But beyond our borders things aren't nice. People are suffering. On Feb. 11 FoxNews.com reported that Chinese authorities were cracking down on Christian churches that operate outside government control. Nearly 24,000 Christians have recently been arrested ...

PORTLAND — A former Washington state Transportation Department engineer yesterday has found himself, his imam and his mosque swept into an unfolding investigation by Portland's joint terrorism force led by the FBI. Farid Adlouni, a civil engineer and U.S. citizen who once worked out of the Vancouver office, was profiled in The Oregonian newspaper yesterday as a man with business ties to a top Osama bin Laden aide and who has attracted FBI scrutiny. Adlouni, 38, yesterday said he had "done nothing wrong." The imam, Mohammad Abdirahman Kariye, also a U.S. citizen, was recently charged with two felony counts of...

Gems, al-Qaida and murder. Mystery over killing of Osama Bin Laden's friend · Saudi man's death was political, say his family· US secret service was monitoring his activities Nick Fielding Friday March 2, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Pallbearers carry the coffin of Muhammad Jamal Khalifa at Ivato airport in Antananarivo, in Madagascar. Photograph: Jasleen Sethi/Reuters When Muhammad Jamal Khalifa was found dead at a remote gemstone mine in south-eastern Madagascar at the end of January, local police quickly put the murder down to a business deal gone wrong. The Saudi businessman, 49, had had to call in local police to...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested a man suspected of having links to arms trafficking and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for travelling on a false passport, according to a police spokesman. Police acting on a tip-off, arrested Sanjivan Ruprah, 36, in the northern town of Cremona, outside Milan, on Friday. He was travelling on a false Belgian passport, the spokesman said on Saturday. "Sanjivan Ruprah is an internationally known figure," he said. "He is known as an international trafficker of arms and diamonds and has already been arrested in Belgium, from where he was released on bail."...

Russian Mogul's Planes Took al-Qaida, Taliban Gold To Sudan9-3-2 Planes owned by Russian businessman Viktor Bout have been used to fly al-Qaida and Taliban gold to Sudan in recent weeks, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Several shipments of gold were delivered by boat from Karachi, Pakistan, to either Iran or the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper said, citing unidentified European intelligence officials. From there, the gold was flown on charted planes to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where al-Qaida has broad business contacts, the paper said. European officials believe the gold was transported by Air Bas, an airline set up...

KINSHASA, Congo -- A U.N.-backed body assigned to curb the sale of conflict diamonds suspended the Republic of Congo from the legitimate diamond trade on accusations the African nation sent millions of dollars in smuggled gems onto the world market. The suspension followed a May 31-June 4 mission to Republic of Congo that found the country was dealing in millions of carats of smuggled diamonds from other African countries. The West African country was sending the gems through the lesser diamond centers of Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates to avoid rigorous controls at the world's diamond hub, Antwerp, Belgium,...

Botswana: Senator Jefferson Graces Nchindo Charge SheetMmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone) 10 January 2008 Posted to the web 10 January 2008 Tshireletso Motlogelwa The embattled United States Senator, William Jefferson has turned up in the charge sheet brought by the prosecution against former Debswana chief executive, Louis Nchindo and other senior members of the company. Jefferson, who late last year was served with a 95 page long indictment by the US department of justice on a wide range of criminal charges relating to his various trips to Africa, visited Botswana a few years ago on two occasions. Late last year, the media...

A SEBEGALESE Muslim cleric deported from Italy as a danger to state security was quoted today as telling a pan-Arab newspaper that he had met three times with Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The cleric, Abdel Qadir Mamour, told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview by telephone from Dakar, Senegal, that he had the meetings with bin Laden in Sudan from 1993 to 1996. Mamour said bin Laden had provided money to finance his trading in diamonds between Africa and Belgium, but did not say how much money was involved or if bin Laden was...

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by UN-backed prosecutors obtained by The Associated Press. The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaida laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive. Al-Qaida figures, including some already wanted in pre-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets, dealt directly with then-president Charles Taylor and other leaders and warlords in the West African country of Liberia from 1999...