Free Republic

February 3, 2005 -- Brooklyn jurors on the terror-financing case of a Yemeni sheik yesterday viewed secret tapes of him huddling with an assistant — allegedly to create code words for weapons and ammunition. Not knowing his German hotel room was wired, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad allegedly suggested to his assistant that instead of referring to a shortage of ammunition, they could say, "The corn is running low." "A person must be clever," al-Moayad, 56, tells Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, 31, on the tape. "For example, if you wish to buy ammunition . . . 'By God, Sheik Mohammed,...

A federal jury in Brooklyn yesterday watched a secretly recorded videotape of a Yemeni cleric boasting about his relationship with Osama Bin Laden. "We talked and chatted like normal people," Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad told a pair of FBI informants meeting him in a wired hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany. Al-Moayad added that he provided Bin Laden with financial support and taught him Islamic law. "He called me 'his sheik,'" he said. As a result of the January 2003 sting operation, Al-Moayad and an associate are charged with conspiring to funnel cash, weapons and other support to Al Qaeda and...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, determined to shut off the cash flow to the terror group Hamas, is probing possible Hamas money laundering operations in several states including New York, sources told the Daily News. Hamas and its suicide bombings in Israel have become a major obstacle to President Bush's road map to Mideast peace and the White House has called on nations to block support for the group. In the U.S., federal prosecutors believe that money donated to Islamic charities at a Brooklyn mosque were siphoned off to terror groups. A key suspect in the case, Sheik Mohammed...