Posted on 10/30/2005 12:56:42 PM PST by JeepInMazar
U.S. Reps. Sue Kelly (R-NY) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) led a Congressional Anti-Terrorist Financing Task Force forum in New York City on Monday to scrutinize the role of Saudi Arabian charities in financing terrorism and to assess ways to improve domestic and international initiatives to stop terror funding networks.
The forum analyzed a wide range of topics related to terror finance and included input from panelists ranging from terror finance experts and Middle Eastern scholars to victims of terrorist attacks. House Majority Leader Roy Blunt also participated in the forum.
"The United States must remain ever-vigilant in finding and freezing terrorist money around the world, and we need to demand similar vigilance from all countries around the globe," said Kelly, a co-chair of the Task Force along with Maloney and the chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations that examines terrorism finance issues. "This forum helps bring a more urgent and centralizing focus on terrorism financing. We must ensure we are doing everything possible to stop the money being used to support terrorist attacks."
The forum discussion centered around Saudi Arabia and Saudi charities - including the Saudi Committee for the Relief of the Palestinian People that is at issue in an ongoing money laundering case at Arab Bank's New York branch. Forum panelists offered possible new approaches that can be taken to combat terror financing, and victims of terrorist attacks shared their experiences and sentiments on the urgency to shut down the funding networks that support terrorism.
In order to carry out attacks, terrorist groups raise money for recruitment, training, housing, supplies, weapons, and travel. The 9/11 attacks, for instance, are believed to have cost roughly a half-million dollars to plan and execute. To funnel terror money throughout the world, terrorists use charities among a wide variety of alternative funding systems that are incredibly difficult to trace.
Kelly noted that some progress is being made in stopping terrorist funding networks. For example, in a recently-released letter written by top Al Qaeda operative Al-Zawahari, he complains about having serious financial difficulties. "That is a very encouraging sign that U.S. efforts to stop terror financing of Al Qaeda are indeed working," Kelly said. "But we still have a lot more work to do."
To build on current efforts and ensure that other nations are fully cooperating in this area, Kelly is pushing a bill in Congress to create a Treasury-led certification regime on terrorist financing. "This would enable the U.S. government to crack down on foreign governments or financial institutions that turn a blind eye to terrorist money, and sanction them for failing to meet their responsibilities in this worldwide fight against those who fund terrorism," Kelly said.
The Congressional Anti-Terrorist Financing Task Force was founded by Kelly, Maloney, and several other House members last year to identify strengths and weaknesses of current anti-terrorist financing strategies and propose bipartisan solutions to help improve current efforts to shut down terrorist funding networks.
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