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In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

The Yassine family of Austin, Texas is apparently quite the enterprising group. Led by Hussein “Mike” Yassine, the Yassines were quite diversified. They own 8 bars. According to law enforcement authorities they are also a one-family crime wave. They are involved in murder, money laundering, drug dealing–and they have a brother back in Lebanon who is part of Hezbollah.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indianapolis police said Friday morning that a 15-year-old boy from Afghanistan who has been missing since Thursday night was homesick and likely ran away. Authorities have been in contact with the U.S. State Department as the search for Mohammed Karim Azizi, 15, continues. Azizi, an exchange student who was staying with a host family in Forest, Ohio, was with a group of FFA students from his exchange school, Riverdale High School, visiting Indianapolis for the National FFA Convention. Indianapolis police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said Azizi has been in the U.S. for two months and comes from a large...

LONDON—A British Airways computer expert was charged Thursday with plotting suicide bombings—including one he allegedly planned to carry out himself. Prosecutor Colin Gibbs alleged that Bangladesh-born Rajib Karim deliberately sought a job with the airline in order to further an unspecified terrorist conspiracy. Mr. Gibbs told the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court that the 30-year-old plotted with unidentified contacts in his home country, Pakistan, and Yemen over the past four years. He said that Mr. Karim shared information about his work, including British Airways' security measures. Mr. Gibbs also said that Mr. Karim had offered to join the airline's cabin...

THE Taliban chief who threatened to slaughter Prince Harry has been assassinated by special forces soldiers. Australian marksmen "took out" Mullah Abdul Karim in a secret mission sanctioned by top brass. It was part of a concerted campaign designed to rid lawless Oruzgan province of hardcore militants. Similar covert operations are believed to have wiped out more than half a dozen senior Taliban leaders. Karim gained notoriety last year by describing Harry, then serving with the Household Cavalry in southern Helmand, as an "important chicken". Threatening to kill the prince - third in line to the throne - he added:...

Wednesday, October 03, 2007By Susan K. Treutlerstreutler@muskegonchronicle.com The Rev. Antonio Elfeghali clutches his right fist as hard as he can. It is the only way he can describe what happened to his heart when he first saw 9-year-old Karim Ahmad sitting in the sun outside the boy's house in the mountains of Lebanon."I had never seen anything like it," he said. "He had black scabs all over his face. He was covered with insects. He had no hair, no hands. His feet were bleeding."I had never seen such suffering." Elfeghali is at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Muskegon.Karim is...

Every day, Nabil Ahmad goes to a little Catholic Church in Dier El Kamar, Lebanon, to pray. Nabil, who is 12, comes from a Syrian family of nonpracticing Muslims. So at first, the church was foreign to him. But, he makes the trek there anyway because his 9-year-old brother, Karim, is suffering from a rare and horrific disease. Nabil says that he prays that God will make his little brother well. It is the church of the Rev. Antonio Elfeghali, a Marionite priest who in July sent Karim and their mother, Ibtissam Ahmad, to the United States to see doctors....

I took this picture of Karim standing up by himself to wash his hands at the sink. He has done this a few times now. We are so proud of him. I wasn't going to write about this yet, but Father Antonio asked me to do so. When we arrived home from the out-of-state wedding last night, Ebtisam and I were trying to catch up on what had happened while I was gone. I had called them a couple of times to check on them, but I wanted to hear about her days without us. I was surprised and...

Today we had our first visit with the opthalmologist. The eye doctor is Dr. Barron. He is very nice and very smart. He did a complete examination, including an eye test and putting drops in Karim's eyes. Karim was very brave. What he said is that Karim has a lot of scarring on his cornea, or the ocular surface, from the disease. The tearing is impaired as are the mucosal tissues. As a result of the disease, the eyelids are turned out (down), which also prevents the tears from traveling to the ducts in the center part of the...

This morning we had the second appointment with Dr. Van Ittersum, the wonderful dermatologist that is coordinating Karim's treatment. He was very pleased with the results after only one week on Aquaphor. It is an over-the-counter cream. The other cream did not seem to make a difference. So now, we were told to apply the Aquaphor several times daily and at night we have to apply it thickly to his feet, cover with saran wrap, and cover with socks. This will hold the cream in. The goal at this point is to soften the skin on the affected areas....

This evening I could not be with the family because I had a meeting with my wonderful spiritual director, Michael. I learned that my husband, Joe, and Andy had taken Ebtisam and Karim back for another go-cart ride. This time they brought the camera. When I got home, Laura had Karim on her lap and was giving him a singing lesson. She is a music teacher. He was singing all the notes and English words. It was so cute to hear him singing in his little voice. And he had a huge smile on his face! He is getting...

Please give praise to God, not me. One of my friends who has been following the story, referred to me as "St. Liz" earlier this week. I have trouble with this. I am not a saint, but a sinner; a great sinner. When I think of all the times I have failed God, and turned away from Him, it makes me very sorrowful, especially knowing how many times He has been waiting with open arms to receive me when I come to the confessional. My God deserves the praise and the thanksgiving. My God deserves all the love and...

Tonight God gave me a great gift. I was sitting in the rocking chair with Karim in my lap, reading story books to him. No, he doesn't understand English, but he likes the rocking and likes the sound of my voice anyway. He enjoys looking at the pictures. Sometimes he will repeat an English word after I say it. After five books, I realized he had fallen asleep. So I just sat and rocked him and looked down at him in my arms. I thought of Mary as I looked down upon this baby. I thought of how she...

Today we began the day with a very early doctor appointment. We saw the dermatologist who disagreed with the doctor from Lebanon. He says what Karim has is a disease called Olmstead's Syndrome. Only four people in the whole world have had it and it is incurable. It is a skin mutation that is congenital. He will refer us to a plastic surgeon to consider surgery to remove the thick skin around Karim's hands and feet and do a skin graft from his thighs. This doctor is very optimistic that Karim will walk on the plane on the way...

Today we saw the orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Yousif Hamati, from Jordan. It was nice for Ebtisam because he speaks Arabic. I filled him in on what the dermatologist recommended. He can normally do prosthetics, but in this case he wants to do more research and find a doctor that is more capable of working with children, particularly a child with a horrible skin disease such as this. He is going to research the disease, as well as who wrote the articles on the disease, and where those doctors are located. If possible, he will speak with them. In the...

Today was another beautiful day. Karim asked to be taken to the church to pray to Mary. He loves Mary. So we went to St. Michael's church, which is my parish. He prayed before the pieta statue. Then we went to the tabernacle. Ebtisam said they understand that Jesus is truly present in the tabernacle. We went up and Karim touched the tabernacle. Ebtisam said Karim would love to stay in the church all day and pray, so I told them we would stay as long as he wanted. God is doing something wonderful in their lives and I...

U.S. Army Sgt. Karim Iraq, who is charged with deserting the military, was released from Palm Beach County Jail this afternoon - two days after the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office arrested him at his father's house in Wellington. Iraq's family is from Palestine, and Karim Iraq was born in Detroit. His case has been referred to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. "He's a dangerous guy with anti-American slogans and a deserter. It's someone we want to get off the street immediately," Richter said. On handwritten notes on government-issued paper, he curses the military, freedom and the...

Fernando Huarte Santamaría, a leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in the northern city of Gijón, Asturias, contacted Algerian terrorist Benesmail Abdelkrim in the Villabona prison in 2001. Huarte even got Abdelkrim a furlough to go to the dentist and paid his bill; the two last met in October 2004. A few days later, the police arrested Abdelkrim and found the address of a well-known ETA terrorist in his pocket. Abdelkrim served time with two other notorious prisoners, Spaniard Antonio Toro Castro and Moroccan Rafá Zouhier, two police informants accused in the March 11, 2004 bombings. In April 1997...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

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