Posted on 11/14/2007 2:36:21 PM PST by ddtorquee
A seemingly small-time drug ring busted this week in Los Angeles was actually targeted for funding the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the Daily News has learned.
Prosecutors left out the terror tie when they announced Tuesday that federal agents and local cops had arrested a dozen people for allegedly peddling cocaine and counterfeit clothing in Bell, Calif.
But several sources familiar with the investigation said the predominantly Arab-American gang was believed to have smuggled its crime cash to the Iranian-backed terror group.
"This was a classic case of terrorism financing, and it was pretty sophisticated how they did it," a source close to Operation Bell Bottoms told The News.
The defendants once crammed $123,000 in money orders into a stuffed animal flown to Lebanon, an indictment alleged.
The Justice Department's national security division and an FBI counterterrorism agent have signed all the court filings.
Because information linking the gang to Hezbollah came from classified intelligence, the alleged ringleader and "his siblings and associates" face criminal charges instead of a terror rap.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
ping
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Why not charge the alleged ringleader and his siblings and associates with criminal charges AND terror charges?
Ping.
Once you bring terror charges into it you would have to reveal evidence related to terrorism to prove the terrorism charges... which means you’d have to expose classified information which may yet be useful in other ongoing investigations to catch other terrorist fish, and probably you’d have to bring in undercover agents and informants to testify and be questioned by the defense team, effectively ruining their usefulness in future work.
ping
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YEP, and thank you Godzilla for the ping.
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