Free Republic

Dearborn man pleas guilty to aiding terror group 3/2/2005, 3:36 a.m. ET The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — A Dearborn man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. According to federal prosecutors, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, hosted meetings in his home in late 2002 where a guest speaker from Lebanon solicited donations for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. The government didn't identify the speaker at the meetings. It said the money was intended for Hezbollah's orphans of martyrs program to benefit the families of those killed...

The relations between Russia and the Shiite's religious leadership in Lebanon started to develop in the beginning of the seventies. The spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community, Imam Moussa Al-Sadr, visited Moscow in 1972 and asked Soviet authorities to issue humanitarian aid to his people. At the same time cooperation between the Marxist factions of the PLO that were active in Lebanon and Soviet military intelligence – GRU, intensified greatly. Several soviet officers (speaking fluent Arabic) even visited Palestinian terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon between 1972-1975. Using their connections in PLO they managed to establish...