Free Republic

SNIPPET: "BRUSSELS, March 24 (Reuters) - SNIPPET: "There is a Venn diagram that you could draw with overlap between al Qaeda and organised crime," said Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and a former deputy assistant secretary for intelligence at the U.S. Treasury. "But in the real world, as opposed to the Jack Bauer world, you don't have the Sicilian mafia and Osama bin Laden's guys meeting at the hip," he told Reuters in an interview, referring to the fictional counter-terrorism agent in the TV series 24. Levitt, a former terrorism analyst with the FBI and a...

Note: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: SEVEN CHARGED FOR ILLEGAL EXPORT OF ELECTRONICS TO U.S. DESIGNATED TERRORIST ENTITY IN PARAGUAY February 19, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jeffrey H. Sloman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Anthony V. Mangione, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Office of Investigations, John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, Harold Woodward, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Michael Johnson, Special Agent in Charge, Department of Commerce (DOC), Adam J. Szubin, Director, Department of the...

Is al Qaeda Bankrupt? Nathan Vardi, 02.11.10, 04:00 PM EST Forbes Magazine dated March 01, 2010 Desperate for funds, the terrorist group has turned to affiliates that rely more and more on crime. Jihadists had a name for Abd al Hamid al Mujil--"the million dollar man." Al Mujil had forged a personal relationship with Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, spending parts of the late 1990s in Afghanistan. In those days the Kuwaiti-born al Mujil traveled to various Arab countries to meet with bin Laden's deputies. As recently as 2006 al...

Occasionally, I like to write editorials and opinion pieces to keep my writing skills up and take my frustrations with government policy at the same time.I doubt this will ever run in a newspaper, but I've decided to share it anyhow. Piracy: The Threats and Possible Solutions Part I: The Threat We all remember the times when we were kids. We remember raising the jolly roger, wearing an eye patch, and having a parrot on our shoulder. Normally we would have our parents play the role of victim as we plundered fake gold coins as we, and our friends, would...

reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others...

MOGADISHU, Somalia — As a Spanish warship looked on, a $3.3 million ransom was delivered by boat Tuesday and Somali pirates freed a Spanish trawler and its 36 crew members. Spain's prime minister did little to deny paying off the hijackers — one reason the lucrative attacks are on the rise. "The government did what it had to do," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a news conference in Madrid. "The important thing is that the sailors will be back with us. The first obligation of a country, of the government of a state, is to save the lives...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2009 – Iraqi forces, with U.S. advisors, in recent days have arrested an alleged terrorist financier and recruiter, as well as five suspects in a roadside bomb network, military officials reported. In Balad, the Iraqi army’s emergency response brigade arrested alleged Khitab Hezbollah financier and recruiter Khalid Masur Ismail in Baghdad’s Sadr City district. Ismail, who also is known as Abu Mustafa, was arrested on a court-issued warrant when he identified himself upon contact and admitted to working as a manager for a security firm alleged to be a front for Khitab Hezbollah. During the operation, Iraqi...

"The liquid bomb plot 'terror banker' still walking free in London as Yard chief accuses U.S. of rushing investigation" By DAILY MAIL REPORTER Last updated at 2:26 PM on 08th September 2009 SNIPPET: "And it also emerged today that a suspected key figure in the plot is still at large in Britain despite being pinpointed as an Al Qaeda financier with links both to the airline plan and the 21/7 bombers." SNIPPET: "Intelligence sources in the UK have indicated it was surveillance of Mohammed Al Ghabra, 29, who first led them to the airline plotters. He is suspected of being...

SNIPPET - Quote: Pak raids unravel Taliban-drugs link ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities arrested 13 Islamist militants in separate raids that police said on Monday foiled major terrorist attacks and provided clues to how drug sales help fund the Taliban.

The Law: Terrorists have had lots to celebrate recently as court rulings from Bangkok to Madrid wiped out years of work to stop them and raised doubts about treating the war on terror as a law-enforcement action.Last Friday, a U.S. federal judge ordered the release of Sheik Mohammed al-Moayad, a Yemeni cleric convicted in 2005 of financing Hamas and trying to bankroll al-Qaida by as much as $20 million. Al-Moayad had been sentenced to 75 years, but based on claims of improperly admitted evidence, a judge ordered him freed. Now set for deportation, he will likely kill again. Then on...

SNIPPET: "The American Civil Liberties Union released a report June 16 (together with a You Tube video) attacking the U.S. government's efforts to shut down terrorist-financing charities. The report was based on 120 interviews, 115 of which were conducted with Muslim community leaders and other Muslims "directly affected by" U.S. government policies regarding the charities. It suggests (contrary to a substantial body of evidence) – that the U.S. government was wrong to have acted against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation and other charities accused of raising money for terrorist...

Turn your clock back 70 years. Imagine that Wall Street banks and brokerages sold Nuremberg-compliant bonds and stock funds in 1938. American Nazi sympathizers bought financial instruments certified by Berlin-based advisors as free of “Jewish profits” from, say, Salomon Brothers and Bloomingdale’s. In turn, a percentage of such funds’ gains underwrote pro-Nazi charities, like the German-American Bund, and similar organizations in the Fatherland, like the Hitler Youth. Seventy years hence, an analogous outrage grows on Wall Street, only this time for real. Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is expanding among banks and securities houses eager to absorb the hundreds of billions of...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

(IsraelNN.com) Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy, said at the Jerusalem Conference Tuesday that Saudi Arabian bankers are the main financiers of global terrorism. Corrupt “Sharia financing” banking practices - legal under Islamic law - are a fairly new phenomenon, Ehrenfeld said. They were first developed by the Muslim brotherhood in the 70s, following the financial power gained by Saudis during the oil boom. Ehrenfeld at Jerusalem Conference ”Saudis are using money in order to corrupt the West, to fund terrorism, and eventually to take over the West,” said Ehrenfeld. “For years, Saudi Arabia has been a...