Free Republic

<p>November 10, 2003 -- The Yemeni owner of a tiny Brooklyn ice-cream shop that took in an astonishing $20 million in six years is suspected of funneling millions to an al Qaeda-linked sheik.</p> <p>Agents, acting on a tip, learned that $20 million passed through the bank accounts of Abad Elfgeeh's tiny Park Slope shop, Carnival French Ice Cream, between 1997 and early 2003.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) - An FBI informant who set himself on fire in front of the White House played a role in at least three terror investigations, court documents show. Defense attorneys said Wednesday they are re-examining Mohamed Alanssi's role in the cases against their clients, who are accused of helping fund Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Palestinian group Hamas. "Ultimately what I'm heading for is a motion for dismissal," said Frank Hancock, the lawyer for Abad Elfgeeh, a Yemeni-born man accused of illegally sending millions of dollars overseas. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, who filed the...

NEW YORK -- A judge on Tuesday threw out the guilty plea of an ice cream shop owner in Brooklyn whom prosecutors linked to funneling tens of thousands of dollars to al-Qaida and other terrorist networks. Judge Charles P. Sifton said the Yemeni proprietor, Abad Elfgeeh, had not understood the consequences of his guilty plea to illegally transferring money to bank accounts in Yemen, Switzerland, Thailand and China. FBI agents arrested Elfgeeh last year after learning that $20 million had passed through the bank accounts of his Brooklyn-based business from 1997 and 2003. He pleaded guilty in October. Elfgeeh, a...