* http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-102001money.story
Money Trail Leads to Gulf Accounts Probe: Three suspected hijackers wired $15,000 to an exchange house in United Arab Emirates on eve of the attacks.
By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER and PATRICK J. McDONNELL, Times Staff Writers
"..Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi...wired about $15,000 in cash to the currency exchange on the eve of the attacks. .... wire transfers to a man identified as Mustafa Ahmad, thought to be a financial officer in Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network.
..Al-Shehhi wired $5,400 to Ahmad, also known as Shaykh Saiid, shortly before noon on Sept. 10 from a Western Union office at the Greyhound bus terminal in Boston...
... Separately, .. Waleed M. Alshehri sent $5,215 to Ahmad from a currency booth at Boston's Logan Airport on the evening of Sept. 9.
.... Finally, Atta wired money to Ahmad on Sept. 8 and 9. ... Ahmad picked up the transfers on Sept. 11 from the Al Ansari exchange in Sharja... The same day, Ahmad used a Saudi Arabian passport to fly from Dubai to Pakistan.."
November 16, 2001
Much-smuggled gem aids al-Qaida
Bought, sold by militants near mine, tanzanite ends up at Mideast souks
By Robert Block and Daniel Pearl
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(snip)
A TRADE GROUP called the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association denies that bin Laden’s al-Qaida 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 bin Laden buy stones from miners and middlemen, smuggling them out of Tanzania to free-trade havens such as Dubai and Hong Kong.
“Yes, people here are trading for Osama. Just look around and you will find serious Muslims who believe in him and work for him,” says Musa Abdallah, a Kenyan who has worked as a tanzanite miner for six years.
(snip)