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State Treasurer Sarah Steelman today called for a halt to the investment of Missouri’s state public retirement funds in companies and banks that support terrorist activities or aid rogue states that support terrorist acts. “Missouri’s retirement fund is now holding direct investments in overseas companies and banks that are alleged to have funding ties with terrorist activities and/or that are active in rogue states such as Iran,” Steelman said. “I am demanding these investments be stopped now, and stand ready to fight for whatever policy changes are necessary to make certain such investments are never made again.” Steelman became a...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Buying knockoff designer handbags and Hello Kitty T-shirts on city street corners may ultimately be helping terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, law enforcement officials and experts testified Wednesday. Profits from faux Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada purses, scores of pirated DVD movies, and counterfeited clothing and other goods have been traced to supporters of terror organizations, the experts said. "We have encountered suspects who have shown great affinity for Hezbollah and its leadership," Lt. John Stedman of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. In one example, Stedman said, a...

): Switzerland has frozen 82 bank accounts of individuals linked with Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban since the 9/11 incidents in the United States, thus making a significant contribution in the global war on terrorism. The total amount frozen was to the tune of $25.5 million, which was nearly one third of the assets of various terrorist groups seized worldwide since the gruesome terrorist strikes in the US. Strongly refuting allegations that Switzerland was providing a safe haven to the illegal funds of terrorist groups, he said Berne was cooperating fully with the international community in the...

An analysis of public pension systems in the U.S. finds the largest and most prominent funds tend to be heavily invested in global publicly traded companies that have business activities in terrorist-sponsoring states. According to a report by the organization DivestTerror.org, the top 100 pension systems in the U.S. invest between 15 and 23 percent of their portfolio in companies that do business in nations considered to be sponsors of terror. The group hopes to pressure such pension funds to change course, pull their funds from terror states and thereby help dry up the source of funds available to anti-American...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 140 people in a nationwide raid of unlicensed money transmittal businesses and underground "hawalas," seizing more than $25.5 million in illicit proceeds bound for the Middle East and Southwest Asia, ICE officials said yesterday. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia, who heads ICE, said the agents -- acting under the authority of the USA Patriot Act -- ?shut down? several businesses that had transferred millions of dollars to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The probe netted 138 criminal indictments.

100 Israelis to testify in Florida trial of alleged Jihad fundraisers By Roni Singer and Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondents Some 100 survivors of terror attacks, relatives of those killed, police investigators, Magen David Adom paramedics, and ZAKA volunteers will testify in what American authorities regard as the most important terrorist trial in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks. The group will be flown to Tampa, Florida early next month to serve as prosecution witnesses in the trial of four Arab-Americans accused of belonging to Islamic Jihad and raising funds to finance terror attacks, including some that took...

With the defense still seeking a change of venue, jury selection began Monday in the trial of former state university professor who is charged with aiding a Palestinian terrorist group. Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer scientist, and three co-defendants are charged with raising money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is on a State Department list of terrorist organizations. Attorneys for Al-Arian and the federal public defender's office, which represents co-defendant Hatim Naji Fariz, claim the jury pool has been tainted by politics and media coverage and asked U.S. District Judge James Moody to move the trial...

CBS-11 News The Investigators FORT WORTH -- At home and off duty, Fort Worth Police Detective Scott Campbell never lets two semi-automatic Glock .45s stray far from his shooting hand. He sleeps with one, and while awake, he eats and watches television with both weapons close by. Det. Campbell's wife keeps a loaded gun close at hand too, even though she is a stay-at-home mom who cares for the couple's two young children, ages 4 and 1. Det. Campbell and his wife go to these extraordinary lengths because they and their children have been marked for assassination. A ruthless criminal...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Ten years ago, American student Alisa Flatow boarded a bus headed to a Gaza Strip beach resort for a much needed break from her studies. At the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom, a young man sat in a van loaded with explosives. As the bus approached, he steered his rolling bomb at it with ferocious speed and slammed into the bus' side. {snip} Now her parents are looking for justice half a world away in Tampa, where a former computer science professor and three others are going on trial on charges they helped fund the terrorist...

Muntasser, a Libyan national who owns Logan Furniture, and Muhamed Mubayyid, a Lebanese national from Shrewsbury, were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy and filing false tax returns for an Islamic charity to hide support for jihad. Federal prosecutors claim that in the early '90s, Muntasser, 40, ran the Boston branch of an organization that investigators contend was a fore-runner to al-Qaeda.

Does Arab Bank have terror ties? May 10: A criminal investigation is under way into a prominent Middle Eastern bank's possible involvement with dozens of suspected terrorists. NBC's Lisa Myers reports. Terror ties at a Middle Eastern bank? FBI investigates Arab Bank for allegedly supporting suicide bombers and doing business with suspected terrorists; bank denies charges By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit Updated: 9:27 a.m. ET May 11, 2005AMMAN, Jordan - August 2001: A suicide bomber hits the Sbarro pizza parlor in Jerusalem, killing 15 people, including an American — Shoshana Greenbaum, a pregnant schoolteacher. The Palestinian bomber's...

CAIR: How Close to Terrorism? By Andrew Whitehead and Lee Kaplan FrontPageMagazine.com | May 11, 2005 The conviction of a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) state operative is but the latest apparent link between that Islamist organization and Islamist terrorism. On April 13, 2005, Ghassan Elashi, founder of the group's Texas chapter (CAIR-Texas) – as well as longtime associate of CAIR's top leadership and beneficiary of CAIR fundraising and support – was convicted of laundering money for Islamic terrorist organizations from November 1995 through April 2001. Dating back to the early 1990s, Elashi had close ties to CAIR's leaders Bassam...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - The suspected financial mastermind of an al-Qaida cell accused of helping plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks depicted himself Tuesday as a legitimate businessman and a moderate Muslim. Syrian-born real estate promoter Mohamed Ghaleb Kalaje Zouaydi is accused of using his business dealings as a front for financing the Spanish cell and funneling money to Muslim extremists in other countries, including Germany, another staging ground for the suicide airliner attacks in the United States. Zouaydi testified that one such transfer he made to Germany in 1999 to Mamoun Darkanzali - an alleged al-Qaida member said to...

Terror Suspect Gets Invitation To Have Dinner With President HARTFORD, Conn. -- A year after federal agents raided his home in a terrorism investigation, Muslim businessman Syed Maswood is lucky to get on an airplane without being detained and searched. But that didn't stop him from getting an invitation to dine with President Bush. Maswood, a nuclear engineer who has not been charged with any crime and has been trying for months to get his name off no-fly lists, received an invitation to serve as an honorary chairman at a Republican fundraiser with Bush in Washington next month. A Republican...

Americans' Tax Dollars Fund the Wahhabi Lobby March 15, 2005 Americans' Tax Dollars Fund the Wahhabi Lobby In a startling article today, "Federal Money Goes to Controversial Muslim Group," Sherrie Gossett reveals for Accuracy in Media that the Bush administration has sent $50,000 to the Islamic Society of North America, a leading organization in the Wahhabi lobby's American division. Mohamed El-sanousi, director of community outreach and communications for ISNA, told Gossett his organization received grants in 2003 and 2004 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. The money did not...

Gianfranco Fini, the Italian Foreign Minister, increased a diplomatic row with the United States today by demanding that Washington identify and punish those responsible for the shooting of Rome’s top intelligence agent in Iraq. Signor Fini dismissed the American version that a lack of communication was responsible for the death of Nicola Calipari, who died in a hail of gunfire from US troops as he escorted a freed Italian hostage to Baghdad airport on Friday. Signor Calipari had made "all the necessary contacts" with US authorities in Baghdad, the minister said. In his account to parliament of the shooting, which...

A Yemeni cleric who once said Osama bin Laden called him his sheik was convicted of terrorism-financing charges today in a federal court in New York City. The victory for the Justice Department came in one of the government's most visible terrorism-financing prosecutions, which had for a time appeared uncertain after the F.B.I.'s star informer drew attention by setting himself on fire outside the White House in November. The sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a prominent Yemeni who once held a government post in his homeland, was convicted after a five-week trial that federal prosecutors portrayed today as providing "an...

Sinn Féin's US fundraising under threat By Jimmy Burns Published: February 28 2005 02:00 | Last updated: February 28 2005 02:00 Mounting allegations of IRA involvement in the £26.5m Belfast bank robbery and growing police suspicions of a much wider involvement of the Irish republican movement in money-laundering operations are threatening Sinn Féin's legitimate fundraising operations in the US, say diplomatic sources in Washington. According to Irish officials, the fact that the onslaught on the alleged criminal activity of Irish republicans is being led by the Irish government is fuelling dissent among supporters of Sinn Féin, the IRA's political wing,...

A U.S. bank regulator has ordered Palestinian-managed Arab Bank Group to convert its New York branch to a federal banking agency, ending the bank's wire transfer business. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said it determined that the bank's branch had internal control weaknesses, especially in its international funds transfer activities. Arab Bank, by far the largest bank operating in the Palestinian territories, has had several lawsuits brought against it on behalf of relatives of U.S. citizens killed or injured in violence in the Middle East, accusing the bank of helping move money to families of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. regulators said Friday that Arab Bank PLC, one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East, has inadequate controls against money laundering at its New York branch and has been ordered to stop transferring funds or opening new accounts there. In an unusual move, the Office of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, a Treasury Department agency, said the branch was being converted into an entity that will not conduct traditional banking activities but will continue to engage in corporate and trade financing. Jordan-based Arab Bank, with operations in 30 countries, faces several lawsuits in...