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U.N. asked to punish two Saudi activists
Bakersfield Californian ^ | 12/21/04 | Edith M. Lederer - AP

Posted on 12/21/2004 6:16:45 PM PST by NormsRevenge

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia asked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to impose sanctions on British-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih for allegedly providing financial and material support to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

The United States and Saudi Arabia also asked the council to impose sanctions on Saudi businessman Adel Abdul Jalil Batterjee, who was instrumental in founding the Benevolence International Foundation, an Islamic charity that the United States has previously deemed a global terrorist group.

Council diplomats said the two names were circulated among the 15 Security Council members on Tuesday. If there are no objections by noon Thursday they will be added to the list of individuals subject to U.N. sanctions.

Anti-terrorism sanctions require all 191 U.N. member states to impose a travel ban and arms embargo against those linked to the Taliban or al-Qaida and to freeze their financial assets. The list currently includes 318 individuals and 115 groups.

Al-Faqih, who advocates replacing the Saudi monarchy with a popularly elected government, heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia in London. He claimed in May that he was the real target when the Saudi Arabian government accused British civilians and diplomats of involvement in bombings four years ago.

According to a U.S. Treasury statement on Tuesday, Al-Faqih once shared an office in the late 1990s with Khaled al Fawwaz, who served as an operative for bin Laden in Britain. The exiled Saudi physician also paid for a satellite phone that bin Laden allegedly used to help carry out the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya Tanzania, it said.

While al-Faqih's movement has issued disclaimers warning users not to attribute postings on its website to al-Qaida, the Treasury statement said extremists use the site "to post all al-Qaida-related statements and images." Information available to the U.S. and British governments "shows that the messages are intended to provide ideological and financial support to al-Qaida affiliated networks and potential recruits," it said.

Batterjee founded the precursor to the Benevolence International Foundation in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the late 1980s, providing support to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is already on the U.N. sanctions list.

In 1993, Batterjee incorporated the foundation in the United States where it provided financial support to Islamic fighters worldwide, including members of al-Qaida, the Treasury statement said, adding that this was confirmed at one point by bin Laden.

"Adel Batterjee has ranked as one of the world's foremost terrorist financiers, who employed his private wealth and a network of charitable fronts to bankroll the murderous agenda of al-Qaida," said Stuart Levy, the U.S. Treasury's undersecretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

"A worldwide asset freeze, including in his home country of Saudi Arabia, will deal a serious blow to this key terrorist facilitator," Levy said in the statement.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abdulbatterjee; abduljalilbatterjee; activists; adelabdulbatterjee; adelbatterjee; alfaghi; alfagih; alfaqhi; alfaqih; alfawwaz; alqaeda; alqaida; arnout; asked; baterjee; baterji; battergi; batterjee; batterji; benevolence; bif; binladen; britain; fawwaz; globaljihad; goldenchain; hamas; hekmatyar; khaledalfawwaz; mira; osamabinladen; punish; saadalfaghi; saadalfagih; saadalfaqhi; saadalfaqih; saudi; terrorcharities; terrorcharity; terroristfunding; uk; un; unitednations; usamabinladen

1 posted on 12/21/2004 6:16:45 PM PST by NormsRevenge
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To: NormsRevenge
I'm sure Kofi will get right on this.

UN out of the US, NOW!

2 posted on 12/21/2004 6:24:19 PM PST by yooper (If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there......)
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To: NormsRevenge

What's the point of this? Is the UN going to send a sheriff?


3 posted on 12/21/2004 6:26:34 PM PST by RBroadfoot
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To: NormsRevenge

Forget the sanctions, just kill them.


4 posted on 12/21/2004 6:28:24 PM PST by Wolfhound777 (It's not our job to forgive them. Only God can do that. Our job is to arrange the meeting)
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To: NormsRevenge

Batterjee's man in the USA, Inaam Arnout, headed the Benevolence International Foundation. It was the FBI raid on Arnout's BIF office that provided (better late than never!) excellent information on the founding of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. And weeks later, when the BIF office was raided in Bosnia, investigators found a list ("the Golden Chain") of bin Laden's money men which has proven to be indispensible in the fight against Islamist terror.


5 posted on 12/21/2004 7:04:40 PM PST by gaspar
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To: Wolfhound777

No kidding. UN sanctions? What's next, a sternly worded rebuke?


6 posted on 12/21/2004 7:06:26 PM PST by dagnabbit (Defeat George Bush's Dishonest Amnesty Scheme. No Mexico Merger. No Global Labor Market.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Why involve the UN at all. Get the CIA to take to to Gitmo.


7 posted on 12/21/2004 7:38:48 PM PST by El Oviedo
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To: NormsRevenge
FEBRUARY 1996 : (UK LABOUR MP GALLOWAY FLIES TO MOROCCO ON BEHALF OF MIRA'S SAAD AL-FAGIH TO MEET CROWN PRINCE OF MOROCCO) In February 1996, UK Labour MP George Galloway flew to Morocco for a secret meeting with the then Crown Prince of Morocco to explore a deal between the Islamic Saudi dissidents [such as British-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Fagih, an Islamic fundamentalist who purchased a satellite phone used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan] and the Saudi royal family. - "MP may be tried as traitor (Galloway)," by Antony Barnett and Martin Bright, The Observer (U.K.) , 04/27/03
[Galloway would later be involved in Oil for Food scandal... being paid by Iraq and his opposition to the Coalition war on Iraq of 2003]

**********************

... Two of the men contacted by Bin Laden in Britain — Khaled al Fawwaz and Ibrahim Eidarous — are now in prison awaiting extradition to the United States for their part in the embassy bombings, which killed 224 and injured thousands.
However, another senior terrorist suspect, Mustafa Nazar, is still on the loose. He spent up to two years in Dollis Hill, north London, recruiting for Al-Qaeda. A key figure in Bin Laden’s terror training camps, he left Britain in 1998 and was last seen in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban.
The telephone records have come to light following the trial last year of four Al-Qaeda terrorists who planned and carried out the bombing of the two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
According to trial documents, the telephone [the one bin Laden used] was bought in 1996 with the help of Dr Saad al Fagih, 45, a bearded surgeon who heads the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia. This fundamentalist Muslim group is dedicated to the overthrow of the Saudi Arabian government but is not part of Al-Qaeda.
Al Fagih, who has been regularly used by the BBC as an expert on Bin Laden, has in the past explained that Muslim scholars said the killing of civilians, including children, was allowed by the Koran as “collateral damage” in the holy war.
It was al Fagih’s credit card which was used to help to buy the £10,500 Compact-M satellite phone in the United States and it was shipped to his home in north London, according to American court documents. His credit card was also used to buy more than 3,000 minutes of pre-paid airtime.

Last week al Fagih, who has not been arrested or charged in connection with any of these actions, said: “I am willing to speak to the authorities if they ask me about this or any other issue, but not to the press.” ...------ "Bin Laden called UK 260 times," by Nick Fielding and Dipesh Gadhery, The Sunday Times (U.K.), 03/24/2002

8 posted on 05/19/2005 9:19:29 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
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To: piasa
...Al-Faqih, who advocates replacing the Saudi monarchy with a popularly elected government, heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia in London. He claimed in May that he was the real target when the Saudi Arabian government accused British civilians and diplomats of involvement in bombings four years ago.
According to a U.S. Treasury statement on Tuesday, Al-Faqih once shared an office in the late 1990s with Khaled al Fawwaz, who served as an operative for bin Laden in Britain. The exiled Saudi physician also paid for a satellite phone that bin Laden allegedly used to help carry out the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya Tanzania, it said.
While al-Faqih's movement has issued disclaimers warning users not to attribute postings on its website to al-Qaida, the Treasury statement said extremists use the site "to post all al-Qaida-related statements and images." Information available to the U.S. and British governments "shows that the messages are intended to provide ideological and financial support to al-Qaida affiliated networks and potential recruits," it said. ...------- "U.N. asked to punish two Saudi activists," by Edith M. Lederer - AP, Bakersfield Californian, 12/21/04

**************************

In the mid-to-late 90s, Ziyad Khaleel finally ran afoul of federal authorities in the United States for taking his orders not from Musa Abu Marzook, but rather from the top advisors of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden. In November 1996, senior al Qaeda lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz instructed Ziyad Khaleel to purchase a $7,500 satellite telephone for personal use by bin Laden. Between 1996 and 1998, Khaleel replenished the phone with more than 2,000 minutes of telephone air time, also at the behest of Fawwaz. Bin Laden's bustling branch office in Columbia, managed by Khaleel and disguised as a low-income housing project, started attracting far too much attention. The FBI secretly raided the nondescript office and collected extensive intelligence information. ----- "“Axis of Evil” Indicted Hamas leader linked to al Qaeda activist in Midwest," by Evan Kohlmann, nationalreview.com, January 2, 2003, 9:20 a.m. , http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/815679/posts?q=1&&page=21

******************************************

Ahmed Abu Marzook is the founder and president of Palestinian Internet Services (P-I-S.com), a prominent local Internet provider located in Gaza. P-I-S.com is responsible for hosting both the websites for the Gaza office of the now-banned Holy Land Foundation and HLF's special hospital in Gaza, Dar al-Islam. The enterprising Ahmed Abu Marzook has also spent extensive time in other parts of the U.S., including in Detroit, Michigan, where he incorporated "A&A Intercontinental" at 3167 Hanley Street.
Unsurprisingly, the same Hanley Street address has also been linked in public records to Ziyad Khaleel, a U.S. citizen and the webmaster of the official Hamas Internet site.
At the time, Khaleel was a roving jack-of-all-trades in the American underground militant Islamic community. His name and Detroit address both appeared prominently in ledgers taken from the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in 1994, a critical international financial and strategic arm of al Qaeda.
While in Orlando, Florida, Khaleel served as the regional director for the Columbia, Missouri-based Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), an Islamic charity that had a multimillion-dollar USAID contract cancelled after the U.S. State Department determined that it was not in America's "national-security interests." In Columbia itself, Khaleel operated a remote-branch office on behalf of radical Saudi dissidents based in London who were closely aligned with Osama bin Laden. He even added a digitized copy of an infamous al Qaeda propaganda video titled "The Martyrs of Bosnia" to his own short-lived Internet website, salam.net. ---------- "“Axis of Evil” Indicted Hamas leader linked to al Qaeda activist in Midwest nationalreview.com," by Evan Kohlmann, January 2, 2003, 9:20 a.m., http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/815679/posts?q=1&&page=21

9 posted on 05/19/2005 9:51:40 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
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To: Fedora

This might be of interest to you- I think these raids on BIF in the Balkans were related to the raids Philip Hsenon & Judith Miller of the NY Times got entangled in.


10 posted on 10/18/2005 9:27:50 AM PDT by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
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To: piasa
Thanks! Regarding the USAID contract mentioned there, a few items I'll add:

First, from the bio of another participant in the EPIC Iraq Forum Wilson where Wilson spoke in 2003:

The 2003 Iraq Forum, June 14, 2003, Washington, DC

George Devendorf is the Director of Emergency Operations for Mercy Corps. Devendorf is responsible for coordinating and supporting disaster preparedness, assessment, and response efforts worldwide. Prior to joining Mercy Corps, Devendorf worked with a variety of relief and refugee organizations, including USAID/OFDA (Kosovo and Macedonia), the International Council of Voluntary Agencies - ICVA (BiH), InterAction (Washington, DC), the International Rescue Committee - IRC (Sudan), UNHCR (Sudan), and the International Organization for Migration - IOM (Philippines). During his career, Devendorf has devoted particular attention to issues surrounding inter-agency coordination and civil-military cooperation in international emergencies.

Also, appearing in a list of international businessmen that includes among numerous others Wilson's Turkish associate Ahmet Okcun:

World Economic Forum: List of Selected Participants

Andrew S. Natsios, Administrator, US Agency for International Development (USAID), USA

Finally, mentioned in an article on Khaled Saffuri:

Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects

Iqbal Unus, a director of Safa Group companies "including Child Development Foundation," whose Herndon residence was raided.

Other donors to Saffuri's PAC whose houses or offices were raided by Greenquest, say federal authorities, include Wael al-Khairo, Ahmad al-Shaer, Ahmad Khatib and Ali Abuzakook - all Barzinji employees - as well as Mohammad Salim Attia, Hibba Abugideiri and Hussam Osman, who worked for the Saudi-funded International Institute of Islamic Thought, and Fakri Barzinji, Altogether, say federal authorities, Saffuri raised slightly more than $28,000 for the AMC-sponsored PAC and distributed it to members of Congress including Rohrabacher and Democrats McKinney, David Bonior and John Conyers of Michigan, James Traficant of Ohio, Peter DeFazio of Oregon, and Nick Rahall of West Virginia.

What united all the recipients, who ranged from far-left Democrats to libertarians, was their support for Palestinian causes and their hostility to the state of Israel.

During the entire period that the AMC's PAC operated, from 1993-98, Saffuri was listed as its treasurer. He signed all the papers, say authorities, and made all the reports to the FEC. And yet, Saffuri insists he had nothing to do with the PAC. "If these guys gave checks to Alamoudi [for NMBA], it doesn't mean much," Saffuri says now. "I was an employee of his. He asked me to do it. I did what he asked me to do. In the end, he was paying the check."

Of the 40 donors to the PAC, the documents show, nearly half have been arrested or are under investigation for terrorist ties.

"Look, I work with people who also do wonderful things," Saffuri says when asked about the terrorist ties of NMBA donors. "Look at Abduwahab [al-Kebsi]," Saffuri's assistant at the Islamic Institute. "Abdu is doing a project to promote democracy for the National Endowment for Democracy in Iraq. Another staff member of the institute is working for the Department of Homeland Security. Another staffer is working for USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development]. If there was one shred of evidence that we were a security risk, they would be talking to me, not you. I am invited to meet with [FBI Director Robert] Mueller at the FBI, on average, every six months. I think if there is a problem with me, I wouldn't be at these meetings."

11 posted on 10/18/2005 3:26:05 PM PDT by Fedora
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