10 women who’ve funded jihad

The wife of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Umaymah Hasan Ahmed Muhammed Hasan, once declared that Muslim women “should fulfill whatever they [the mujahideen] ask of us, may it be through monetary aid to them or any service or information or suggestion or participation in fighting or even through a martyrdom operation” (emphasis mine). Several have taken that message to heart.

Money Jihad has compiled profiles of 10 women who have funded Islamic terrorism since 9/11. This list includes several women who lived on the West coast of the U.S., but also the Midwest, U.K., and Europe. Pakistan-based terrorists and al-Shabaab in Somalia are common recipients of their funds. Several of these women worked with other women to carry out their fundraising or cash smuggling activities, while others worked with men.

Readers may also remember several women who have helped secular terrorist groups rob banks to raise money for their causes, including Ulrike Meinhof (Red Army Faction), Patty Hurst (Symbionese Liberation Army), and Assata Shakur (Black Liberation Army).

Are we forgetting any others?

Jihadist’s family out of business after secret $9 million transfer to Lebanon

Australian financial authorities have foiled an ongoing attempt to keep millions of dollars in transactions off the books by a remittance company owned by a terrorist’s sister and her husband. The case illustrates the possibilities for financial system abuse by small, non-bank financial companies based in the West with significant business operations in high-risk countries like Lebanon. The case also provides justification for probing the money trails and the sympathies of the families of convicted terrorists.

Hat tip to El Grillo for sending in related news. From The Sydney Morning Herald on Sept. 17:

Sharrouf family firm shut over terror funding fears

A Lakemba money transfer business owned by the sister and brother-in-law of convicted Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf has been suspended amid concerns it was sending millions of dollars to the Middle East to finance terrorism.

Damour Sharrouf and her husband Ahmed Alwash have had their Lakemba firm Bisotel Rieh Pty Ltd suspended after the financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC became concerned about millions of dollars sent to Turkey and Lebanon that the firm has failed to account for. It is the first such suspension over suspected terrorism financing.

Ms Sharrouf, 37, is the older sister of Khaled Sharrouf, the 31-year-old who is wanted for terrorism offences and who escaped to the Middle East on his brother’s passport.

Local business owners told Fairfax Media they had seen Khaled Sharrouf inside the Lakemba business, which also operates a travel firm, before he went overseas.

“Yes, I’ve met him before,” barber Mohamad Machlouche, who owns the business next door to the money transfer firm, said. “He seemed different before [he went overseas]. He seemed normal, looking for work, was a normal person.

“No one on earth was expecting anything like this.”

According to the money transfer firm’s website, it has an office in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli, seen as an epicentre for Sunni extremism in the country and a gateway to funding militant groups in neighbouring Syria – raising the possibility that money could even have gone to the brutal Islamic State group.

AUSTRAC’s acting head John Schmidt told Fairfax Media the agency’s concerns were based on the fact that Bisotel Rieh was failing to report all of the money it sent overseas and often refused to reveal who was ultimately receiving the funds. Also, it was sending money to “high terrorism financing risk jurisdictions”.

“We’ve had some concerns about the quality of their reporting. For example, for the period from January to August this year, they reported international funds transfers of $12.3 million. We believe from other sources that it was in fact closer to $21.3 million,” Mr Schmidt said.

“So in that eight-month period, there’s already a $9 million discrepancy. That causes concerns.”…

ISIS taxing each long-haul trucker $800

Taxes make up increasing share of ISIS’s wealth

Trucks passing through Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) checkpoints on highways out of Iraq are being charged a tax of up to $800 per truck. Truckers are issued two tax stamps or receipts for their payments—one is shown at the next checkpoint as proof of payment, and the other is kept for the driver’s records. The taxes are in keeping with traditional Islamic tolls against merchants passing through the jurisdiction of an ‘ashir–a tax agent of an imam.

But ISIS hasn’t stopped there—they’re also collecting a tax on each bank withdrawal they authorize through ISIS-controlled banking committees in Mosul. If you’re an ordinary Mosul bank customer, you have to get permission from ISIS to withdraw your own money, and of course ISIS takes a cut along the way. ISIS probably justify their fees on the basis of reversing any “haram” interest that has accrued to depositors’ savings.

Thanks to Twitter user El Grillo for sending in both of the news items above.

The taxes suggest a deepening of ISIS’s territorial control, authority, expertise, and capacity to increase revenues domestically.  Forbes also reports that ISIS is taxing telecommunications networks and basic utilities.  Non-Muslims face the discriminatory jizya tax as well.

Fracking lets us ditch Saudi oil to use our own

As part of the run-up to Money Jihad’s five-year anniversary, we’re looking back at five important videos from over the past several years about the financing of terrorism.

Last week we looked at money that has been pumped into the Gulf monarchies in oil royalties that they have turned around to use for terror for decades to placate their own Wahhabi domestic religious/political partners.  But what are we going to do about it? Drill our way out. U.S. energy independence from Arab oil, largely driven by technological innovation through hydraulic fracturing, may be the biggest strategic game-changer in the global balance of power since World War II.

From a Fox News interview last year with the Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore and national security analyst KT McFarland:

Readers’ choice: news on ISIS’s cash

Thanks to readers and Twitter followers who have sent in links to several news developments over the last couple weeks about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) finances:

• An Islamic grade school principal in England was also an ISIS “banker” … more>>
  (tip of the hat to Giselle)

• ISIS is smuggling oil into Turkey, and taking new recruits with them on their way back to the battlefront… more>>
  (hat tip to Sal)

• ISIS may have a $200 million oil surplus… more>>
  (hat tip El Grillo)

• Yes, ISIS is still making $3 million a day… more>>
  (h/t 1389)

• Drag a hundred dollar bill through a Morocco trailer park to find your newest ISIS recruit… more>>
  (h/t GENUG)

• The Rand Corporation argues that ISIS doesn’t receive foreign funding, and says it would be tough to cut off their funding… more>>
  (h/t Prof. Bloom)

Finland busts 4 Somalis for wires to al-Shabaab

As Money Jihad and Tundra Tabloids pointed out earlier this year, Finland criminalized the financing of terrorism 12 years ago, but nobody had been convicted yet. That’s about to change. Four Somali men living in Finland have been interrogated and indicted for transferring hundreds of euros to the terrorist group al-Shabaab. Prosecutors suggest the money could be intended to buy weapons, and some of it may have been used for an abortive plot to abduct, drug, smuggle, and conscript teenagers to fight for al-Shabaab.

The transfer of money in fairly small-dollar increments to avoid detection from some radical Somalis living in the West to Somalia, while claiming humanitarian motives, is consistent with al-Shabaab tactics, techniques, and procedures for obtaining overseas financing.

From the Helsinki Times (hat tip Aisha) on Sept. 17:

Four charged with financing terrorism

The first ever investigation into suspected terrorist offences in Finland has spawned criminal charges, with the Office of the Prosecutor General announcing on Wednesday that it has brought charges of financing terrorism against four people.

The suspects are believed to have raised and provided thousands of euros to al-Shabab, a jihadist militant group based in Somalia, fully aware of the destination and intended use of the money.

Although the wire transfers were no larger than 100–200 euros, they would have sufficed for the acquisition of various firearms, reminds state prosecutor Juha-Mikko Hämäläinen. “At the time, an assault rifle could be bought for 140 American dollars in Somalia. A hand grenade cost 25 dollars and a bazooka 150 dollars,” he highlights.

In addition, one of the suspects is accused of recruiting their brother to al-Shabab and planning to abduct his 15–17-year-old children in Finland and to take them to a terrorist training camp in Somalia against their will. The children were to be lured to Kenya under the guise of a holiday, drugged and transported across the border to a training camp in Somalia, where they would have been subjected to forced labour or similar conditions.

The plan was scrapped due to lack of money, according to the prosecution.

As a result, the suspect will also face charges of recruitment for commissioning a terrorist offence and preparation of an offence to be committed with terrorist intent. The offences are believed to have taken place between January 2008 and March 2011.

The suspects have rejected all criminal accusations in interrogations, insisting that the funds were transferred for humanitarian purposes.

Altogether, six people were suspected in the pre-trial investigation, but the Office of the Prosecutor General decided against bringing charges against two of them, a 28-year-old and 31-year-old man…

Al-Bayoumi’s aid to 9/11 hijackers revisited

To recap published evidence on whether money from Saudi officials was given to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the 9/11 Commission reported that Omar al-Bayoumi (a Saudi intelligence agent) helped al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar get established upon their arrival in San Diego, to include a one-time transfer of $9,900 that was reportedly refunded immediately. However, Congress’s joint inquiry into 9/11 found that an alternate assessment of bank records by the FBI found no evidence of a refund to al-Bayoumi. Some FBI agents believed that al-Bayoumi continued paying al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar’s rent, but the 9/11 Commission contradicts them. In either case, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham has indicated that al-Bayoumi played a broader role in the facilitation of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar’s activities in San Diego than official published reports revealed.

Quotations from each source follow:

The 9/11 Commission Report:

We thus do not know when or how Hazmi and Mihdhar first came to San Diego. We do know that on February 4 [2000], they went to the Islamic Center of San Diego to find Omar al Bayoumi and take him up on his offer of help. Bayoumi obliged by not only locating an apartment but also helping them fill out the lease application, co-signing the lease and, when the real estate agent refused to take cash for a deposit, helping them open a bank account (which they did with a $9,900 deposit); he then provided a certified check from his own account for which the al Qaeda operatives reimbursed him on the spot for the deposit.

Congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001:

However, another FBI document appears to reach a different conclusion: ‘a review of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi’s bank records indicate [sic] there is no bank documentation that supports the reimbursement of [the rent money], or any monies to Omar al-Bayoumi from al-Hazmi or al-Midhar.’

The 9/11 Commission Monograph on Terrorist Financing:

A number of internal FBI documents state without reservation that Bayoumi paid rent on behalf of Mihdhar and Hazmi, a claim reflecting the initial view of some FBI agents. More thorough investigation, however, has determined that Bayoumi did not pay rent or provide any funding to the hijackers.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham:

In San Diego, there was a man [Omar al-Bayoumi] and a circle of his friends. The man was described by the FBI as being a Saudi agent. His purpose in San Diego was to monitor Saudi students to assure that they weren’t plotting to overthrow the monarchy. But in January of 2000 he got a second assignment which was to provide protection for two Saudis [Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar] who had just entered the country. He was encouraged to invite them to come to San Diego—they did. He provided them money, a place to live, flight lessons, and an infrastructure of Muslims in San Diego to give them protection and anonymity. These two individuals were on the plane that flew into the Pentagon.

The official story is that al-Bayoumi could never be prosecuted for providing material support to terrorism since the evidence of giving money to the 9/11 hijackers is unclear, and he allegedly had no knowledge of what they would use the money for. However, the material support clause of 18 US Code § 2339 includes more types of support than just money, and paying somebody’s first month rent and security deposit, in a scenario where a landlord would otherwise not have offered a lease, could qualify as support, regardless of whether or not he was refunded. Whether al-Bayoumi knew what the San Diego-based hijackers were planning is a different question, but he was not thoroughly questioned by law enforcement.

As Money Jihad has noted, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar seemed to have received disproportionately less financial assistance from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and his financial intermediary Ali Abdul Aziz Ali than other 9/11 hijackers, even though they lived in the U.S. for a longer period of time and presumably had higher total living expenses. A full accounting of their potential alternate sources of income has never been made available.

In light of the somewhat conflicting accounts of the scope of al-Bayoumi’s interactions with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, it would be appropriate to declassify the 28-page section of Congress’s joint inquiry into 9/11 that dealt with this subject to clear the air.

Islamic Relief gave $118K to terror-linked groups

New tax documents reveal that Islamic Relief USA (IR-USA), the largest Islamic charity in the United States, gave over $118,000 in grants in 2013 to entities with previous connections to terrorism.

IR-USA’s 2013 tax return, which was filed in July 2014, showed that the charity gave $45,495 in grants to the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful 2007 prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for financing the terrorist organization Hamas.

Their form 990 also shows that IR-USA gave $40,000 to the radical mosque Dar Al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Virginia, for a “zakat partner program.” Deceased terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki served as the mosque’s imam leading up to and immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

The tax schedule also documented almost $32,909 in grants to Services for Human Advancement and Resource Enhancement (SHARE) affiliates in Atlanta and Indianapolis of the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA), a group which was founded by an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

IR-USA has been involved in several scandals in recent years: Money Jihad previously reported that IR-USA gives about $5 to $10 million per year to its parent charity Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), which has recently been banned from Israel for funding Hamas. IR-USA was also implicated in fraudulent multi-million dollar valuations of its drug stockpiles. More recently, Islamic Relief affiliates have described their own partnerships with the pro-Hamas front charity IHH to conduct operations in rebel-controlled territory in Syria.

Oil money and Saudi Arabia’s stranglehold over global affairs

The five year anniversary of this blog’s inception is coming up in October. Before then we’ll revisit five videos that have touched on extremely important concepts in terrorist financing.

Today we’ll look at two. Money Jihad has shown one of them before—an interview with Bernard Lewis on C-SPAN—but it’s important enough to return to, about how oil money and the love affair between the House of Saud and Wahhabi clerics precipitated the rise of global jihad:

The other picks up where Lewis left off.  Former CIA director James Woolsey offers additional examples and comparisons about what Saudi oil money and the related control by Wahabbi clerics has meant for Islamic developments throughout the world over the past several decades.

Watching these videos and considering the billions of petrodollars that have flowed to terrorism, it almost feels silly to sniff out smaller transactions of a thousand dollars here and hundred dollars there to individual “martyrs” and their operations.

Money for terror: recommended news reading

• Behind’s ISIS‘s ascendance were piles of money from Kuwait and Qatar… more>>

• Three anthropologists have learned “that ISIS is indeed involved in the illicit antiquities trade,” justifying their looting on the traditional Islamic khums tax… more>>

• The threat of cyber-theft by terrorists raises alarms about the federal backstop for insurance against terrorism… more>>

• Aid and donations are diverted to fund Hamas‘s rockets… Diagram>>

• Biting the hands that fed them:  “Islamic State’s Ultimate Goal: Saudi Arabia’s Oil Wells”… more>>

• Hamas’s budget is between $500 million and $1 billion a year. Funds derive from Iran, Qatar, and Turkey, and from taxing Gazans… more>>

Denmark: Dahabshiil at risk for money laundering

Offices of the money transfer company Dahabshiil, which operates primarily in Somalia, have been found “completely inadequate” in their compliance with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws in Denmark, and the company has been referred to the police for further investigation.

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) began an investigation of Dahabshiil’s offices in Copenhagen, Kolding, Aalborg, and Aarhus in July 2013, and concluded by July 2014 that Dahabshiil “has violated the essential elements of the Money Laundering Act.” FSA found that Dahabshiil’s employees in Denmark received zero training on compliance with the Danish Money Laundering Act, and employees have reported zero cases of suspicious customer transactions over the past five years. The FSA also determined that the destinations of Dahabshiil’s money, Kenya and Somalia, are “countries that have totally inadequate rules to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.”

In response to the FSA’s findings, Dahabshiil denied that its company would be “abused by criminals.”

Financial crime consultant Kenneth Rijock offers the following analysis of FSA’s findings:

Apparently, the local [Danish Dahabshiil] offices had no compliance regime whatsoever, and relied upon the parent entity…

If an EU member nation has taken the trouble to conclude that Dahabshiil represents an unacceptable level of risk, a major UK bank [Barclays] sought to exit the relationship, and ties with Al-Shabaab, which the United States attacked today, and reportedly killed it leader, as representing a clear and present danger to American interests, why can’t OFAC finally smell the coffee, and designate it? Has pressure been exerted by Midwest politicians, who have large Somali expats in their district, and how much more evidence is necessary for sanctions to be imposed?

When I write about high-risk individuals, who are guilty of committing financial crimes, so that compliance officers will know to decline to onboard them as bank clients, I have found that OFAC often doesn’t sanction them for a number of years after the bad news is in the public domain. Why wait so long? There has to be a faster way to identify financial criminals, and terrorist financiers.

Indeed. The FSA’s findings were scarcely reported in Denmark this summer, much less in the United States. Compliance departments have a right to know what allegations and criminal referrals have been made against Dahabshiil.  U.S. financial regulators have some catching up  to do.

In addition to these compliance deficiencies, Money Jihad has previously reported that Dahabshiil makes recurring payments to the al-Shabaab terrorist organization in exchange for the “privilege” of operating in Somalia. Member of Parliament Saado Ali Warsame was slain this summer three years after recording a song describing Dahabshiil’s financing of terrorism and announcing her belief that Dahabshiil had put a bounty on her head.

Meanwhile, several U.S. agencies and politicians are pursuing new ways to ease remittances to Somalia through companies like Dahabshiil.