Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) - A bookstore owner and a jazz musician agreed soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to try to help terrorists in Afghanistan buy weapons and communications equipment to fight American soldiers, the government charged Wednesday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Hou said Abdulrahman Farhane, 51, and the musician, Tarik Shah, 42, spoke with an FBI informant about the plot in Farhane's bookstore in December 2001 "while the ruins of 9/11 were still smoldering." The prosecutor asked that Farhane be held without bail on charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and trying to cover up his...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Yemeni sheik and his assistant were convicted Thursday of plotting to funnel money to al-Qaida and Hamas, handing a victory to prosecutors shaken last year when the man who was supposed to be their star witness set himself on fire outside the White House. Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed were found guilty on all but two of the 10 charges in an indictment that accused them of vital roles in a terror-funding network that stretched from Brooklyn to Yemen. In a meeting with FBI informants in a German hotel room,...

Terror case dealt blow when key witness sets himself afire By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN Associated Press Writer November 16, 2004, 5:30 PM EST NEW YORK -- The prosecution of a sheik accused of funneling millions of dollars to al-Qaida was roiled Tuesday by news that a man who set himself on fire in front of the White House was a key witness in the case. Defense attorneys said Mohamed Alanssi is a confidential informant central to the prosecution of Sheik Ali Hassan al-Moayad, whom U.S. authorities consider their biggest catch to date in a campaign to cut off funding for terrorists....

NEW YORK (AP) — A Yemeni sheik accused of funneling millions of dollars to terrorist networks warned U.S. agents that "Allah will bring storms" to America because of his arrest, according to newly filed court papers. Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad made the remark last year after a German court ordered him extradited to the United States to face charges that he helped finance al Qaeda and Hamas, prosecutors said in the documents filed in U.S. District Court. The statement — spoken in English to agents bringing al-Moayad from Frankfurt, Germany, to New York on Nov. 16, 2003 — counter defense...

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...