Turkey's Radical Drift - The Islamic charity behind the Gaza flotilla and its links to terror

wsj.com ^ | June 4, 2010

[Tailgunner Joe]

The Turkish accounting should begin with a full explanation from the government of its relationship with the IHH, an Istanbul-based Islamic "charity" that purchased three of the six boats used in the flotilla from the city government, sent hundreds of its activists along with it, and reportedly has ties to Turkey's ruling Islamist AKP Party.

The IHH—the Turkish acronym for the "Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief"—has widely reported links to Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and most directly threatens Israel. Moreover, in the 2001 Seattle trial of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millennium bomber, French counterterrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testified that the IHH had played an "important role" in Ressam's plot to bomb LAX airport on New Year's Day, 2000, and that there was "a rather close relation" between the bomber and the Turkish group.

"The IHH is an NGO," said Judge Bruguiere, "but it was also a type of cover-up . . . in order to obtain forged documents and to obtain different forms of infiltration for Mujahideen in combat." In an interview this week with the Associated Press, the judge said he did not know whether IHH was still in the terror business, but he added that "they were basically helping al Qaeda when [Osama] bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil."

In a 2006 study for the Danish Institute for International Studies, terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann noted that Turkey had known of the IHH links to terrorism for at least a decade.

[craig_eddy]

Well slap-my-forehead...

[Bean Counter]