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BOSTON - Three former leaders of an Islamic charity were convicted Friday of duping the U.S. government into getting tax-exempt status by hiding the group's pro-jihad activities. Care International Inc., which is now defunct, described its mission as helping war orphans, widows and refugees in Muslim nations. But prosecutors said the organization also distributed a newsletter promoting jihad and supported Muslim militants involved in armed conflicts around the world. Emadeddin Muntasser, the founder of Care International; Muhammed Mubayyid, the group's former treasurer; and Samir Al-Monla, the president of Care from 1996 to 1998, were charged with tax code violations, making...

Three former leaders of an Islamic charity were convicted on federal tax and fraud charges in Boston yesterday for using tax exemptions to hide support for religious militants and alleged terrorists overseas. The convictions marked a victory for the Justice Department, which has had limited success in prosecuting charity groups suspected of financial ties to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups... The defunct group, Care International Inc., described itself as a charity for Muslim refugees, widows and orphans. Prosecutors said, however, that the organization distributed a newsletter in favor of jihadist causes and lent other support to Islamic militants since its...

In a reprise of its notorious December 2004 delivery of $600,000 in cash and humanitarian aid to the 'other side' in the then al Qaeda controlled Iraqi city of Fallujah as American forces were fighting to liberate the city from the terrorists, the anti-American group Code Pink is again raising money to send to an al Qaeda stronghold in Iraq.Several weeks ago, Code Pink announced that it was soliciting money to send to Nineveh province to aid "Iraqi orphans, widows and internally displaced people."It just so happens that Nineveh province is where al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents have recently regrouped...

The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) has upped the ante in the "financial jihad" and is now raising money through a popular forum on behalf of the mujahideen of al Qaeda. Andrew Cochran believes that this is an indication of the success of the Coalition in breaking al Qaeda's financial networks. CT Blog has this bit from the forum:“Oh Muslims !! this is a call for you from the fighters to the entire Muslims. Following the campaign against Islam to dry its sources, many of the people who support this religion suffer from lack of equipments and basic means for...

On November 20, I posted on the success of the U.S.-led Iraq Threat Finance Cell in disrupting Al Qaeda in Iraq's financial network. Reuven Paz, one of the leading experts in the CT community and the founder and Director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM) at the GLORIA Center in Israel, has written a follow-up to that post for us, with an analysis of Al Qaeda's admission of financial distress. I am pleased to run Mr. Paz's analysis below in its entirety with my gratitude: On 20 November 2007, Andrew Cochran reported on this blog about...

Saudi Arabia is the primary global financier of the Islamist terror cult. Until the Saudis started racking up billions in inflated oil revenues in the 1970s, the Wahhabi movement was regarded by Muslims the world over as little more than primitive insanity. Without rivers of treasure to feed its roots, this horrific movement could neither grow nor thrive. It is the Saudis’ unlimited funds—over $200 billion in foreign exchange earnings in 2006—that have allowed them to buy up the faculties of the Islamic world’s leading intellectual centers; to build or take over thousands of mosques; to establish thousands of radical...

The vast majority of "high value targets" for U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Afghanistan are tied to the Taliban, which is using the country's rampant opium poppy cultivation to fund terrorist insurgencies. "We must make it clear to the Afghan people that we, the international community and the Afghan government are serious about this drug trade and corresponding terrorism," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "We are not just eradicating a few opium fields or arresting some local, midlevel drug dealers to show something is being done, but that is...

Last Friday, President Bush certified Saudi Arabia as a cooperative anti-terrorism ally and released U.S. financial aid to Riyadh. This occurred despite charges leveled against the “Kingdom” by Stuart Levey, the U.S. Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who one day after the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, declared that Saudi Arabia had failed to prosecute terrorism financiers. Levey voiced frustration that not a single terrorist supporter identified by Washington had been prosecuted by the Saudis. “If I could snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,”...

Taliban use hostage cash to fund UK blitz By Massoud Ansari in Kila Abdullah, Pakistan Last Updated: 12:20am BST 14/10/2007 Millions of dollars handed over to secure the release of South Korean hostages in Afghanistan have been used to buy weapons deployed against British and American forces in the country, the Taliban claims. Killed: Major Alexis Roberts Major Alexis Roberts, 32, Prince William's former platoon commander at Sandhurst, was one of the victims of the Taliban offensive funded by the hostage money. According to Taliban fighters interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph, the money has also been used to train recruits...

Refugee or Terrorist? by: Bethany Stotts, October 10, 2007 Following the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act and the REAL ID Act, an effort to prevent further terrorist invasion of U.S. soil. The Patriot Act extends the material support bar to include fundraising for terrorist groups, and is retroactive towards all aliens whatever their entry date. In addition, a 2001 Department of Justice memorandum states that the Patriot act requires the government to deport an alien for fundraising or recruitment on behalf of a terrorist organization “even if the alien did not intend to...

The Long War Journal: Al Qaeda financier and foreign facilitator captured in Baghdad Written by Bill Roggio on October 4, 2007 7:47 AM to The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/10/al_qaeda_financier_a.php Just one day after the announcement of the capture of Muthanna, a senior al Qaeda facilitator of foreign fighters in the Sinjar region on the Syrian border, Multinational Forces Iraq announced the capture of a major financier in Baghdad. The yet to be named al Qaeda financier was captured by the Iraqi Army in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kindi. The al Qaeda operative used his leather business to...

On September 11, 2001, most Americans were shocked to hear that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. The mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United States, Osama bin Laden, was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. Joint Intelligence Report by the U.S. Congress using "incontrovertible evidence" linked Saudi Arabia to the financing of al-Qaeda operatives in the United States. Saudi Arabia’s involvement in terrorist financing can be documented through materials captured by Israel in Palestinian headquarters in 2002-3 including 70 per cent direct funding to Hamas.

As Americans wonder how to cope with Iran, Iran keeps killing Americans. The primary battleground is Iraq, where agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fund and arm the Shiite extremists whose IEDs pierce the armor of U.S. soldiers and whose bombs massacre Iraqi civilians. Within the next few days, four senators will introduce legislation that faces these facts unflinchingly and calls on America to win. The resolution — an amendment to a defense appropriations bill — is sponsored by Jon Kyl, Joseph Lieberman, Norm Coleman, and Lindsey Graham. It expresses the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should “combat, contain,...

Homeland Security: We've warned for years that an Islamist underground exists in this country, secretly working to take over the U.S. Now the mainstream media is waking up to the threat. Yes, theirs is an ambitious plan. But the enemy lurking within is assiduous, patient and well-organized. We are only now starting to see its tentacles, thanks to a landmark federal terror-financing case under way in Dallas. News about the secret Islamist plot against the U.S. is starting to trickle out from the few media covering the trial against the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in America. It...

December 6, 2001 THE MONEY TRAILF.B.I. Traces Hamas's Plan to Finance Attacks to '93By DAVID FIRESTONE ight years ago, after the F.B.I. tracked a group of senior leaders of the radical Islamic group Hamas to a hotel room in Philadelphia, electronic eavesdropping provided the first clear indication that the group planned to raise money in the United States for terrorism in Israel. The results of that surveillance, recently declassified, show that Hamas leaders and their supporters in the United States were even then planning to use violence to defeat the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The ...

Early Tuesday, federal agents acting on President Bush's orders and on the strength of evidence accumulated during years of FBI surveillance, raided several offices of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a group suspected of being the main North American fundraiser for Palestinian Islamic terrorist organization Hamas. The raids followed President Bush's decision to freeze the group's U.S. assets, as well as those of West Bank-based Al-Aqsa Islamic Bank and Beit-el Mal Holdings. It took the Holy Land Foundation only a few hours to mount a media offensive in response to the president's move. Within half-a-day, a series ...

<p>THAT the Holy Land Foundation, under investigation since 1993, may have been able to keep raising money for terrorism before its assets were frozen this week because it was repped by the best-connected law firm in Washington, Vernon Jordan's Akin Gump.</p>

RICHARDSON, Texas – The leader of a large Muslim charity attended a mid-1990s event where $207,000 was raised for Hamas and the keynote speaker urged the crowd to "finish off the Israelis; kill them all," according to an FBI memo. The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, also detailed 1993 meetings between officials of the militant Palestinian group and the charity, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, to discuss fund-raising for the families of suicide bombers. The Treasury Department used the FBI memo as grounds to freeze Holy Land's assets and raid its offices this week. Holy ...

ICHARDSON, Tex., Dec. 5 — In the parking lot of a nondescript suburban office building here, about 300 supporters of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development gathered tonight for a religious vigil. Three times they knelt and rose as one, their lips mouthing nearly silent Arabic prayers. But when they rose for the final time, a local imam, Dr. Nabil Al- Sadoon, began to lead them in a series of noisy chants and protests. "Palestine is occupied! The Israelis are the occupiers!" they shouted at first, and later: "Holy Land is helping the persecuted! The widows! The orphans!" ...

U.S.: Saudis Still Filling Al Qaeda's Coffers ABC News: The Blotter September 11, 2007 5:40 PM http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/us-saudis-still.html Brian Ross Reports: Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda. "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News. Despite some efforts as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, Levey says Saudi...