Free Republic

May 21, 2003, 8:45 a.m. Trails Lead to SaudisA Virginia terror probe continues. By Matthew Epstein In March 2002, Federal terrorism investigators descended upon a group of Saudi-backed executives operating out of northern Virginia. The government hauled away truckloads of files and computer hard drives from the "SAAR Network," a web of dozens of related companies with interlocking officers, directors, and corporate headquarters. The Treasury Department suspected the group was laundering money for al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Now over a year after the raids, many are asking whether the Justice Department will hand down indictments or clear the...

(CNSNews.com) - Fourteen miles from the U.S. Capitol, a basement-run organization with alleged ties to Hamas and al Qaeda is a crucial link in the planning of any future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to several terrorism experts who analyzed documents and other information obtained in a CNSNews.com investigation. The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., is publicly identified as a Muslim think tank but has multiple ties to the terrorism underworld, according to the CNSNews.com sources, who are both inside and outside government. "UASR is a front organization for a terrorist group,"...

<p>A now-defunct New Jersey firm that offered investments to wealthy Muslims, including housing developments in suburban Maryland, raised millions of dollars for what law-enforcement authorities describe as a "who's who" of international terrorists and Islamic extremists.</p> <p>BMI Inc., founded by Soliman S. Biheiri, an Egyptian convicted of immigration violations, reported more than $25 million in projected revenues and leases as early as 1992 in a business that solicited real-estate investments and offered leasing services for Muslims in what authorities said was a scheme based in Virginia and Maryland to raise cash for terrorists.</p>

Islamic charities based in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia invested millions of dollars in a company suspected of funding al Qaeda and the Islamic Resistance Movement, the government alleged for the first time yesterday. An affidavit made public in federal court in Virginia contends that the Muslim charities gave $3.7 million to BMI Inc., a private Islamic investment company in New Jersey that may have passed the money to terrorist groups. The money was part of a $10 million endowment from unnamed donors in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, according to the affidavit filed by David Kane...

Islamic charities based in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia invested millions of dollars in a company suspected of funding al-Qaida and the Islamic Resistance Movement, the government alleged for the first time yesterday. An affidavit made public in federal court in Virginia contends that the Muslim charities gave $3.7 million to BMI Inc., a private Islamic investment company in New Jersey that may have passed the money to terrorist groups. The money was part of a $10 million endowment from unnamed donors in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, according to the affidavit filed by the Bureau of...

As an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Gamal Abdel-Hafiz could have a key role helping America's premier anti-terrorist force protect the United States from harm. But evidence from high-profile terrorism cases suggests that Abdel-Hafiz, an immigrant Muslim, twice refused on principle to tape-record his coreligionists, harming the investigations. The first case concerns a now-defunct Secaucus, N.J.-based Islamic investment bank called BMI Inc. Founded in 1985, it was financed by known terrorists and by members of the bin Laden family. The FBI got a break in 1999, when a BMI accountant contacted it and relayed his suspicions...