Saudi Arabia pledges financial retaliation for disclosing their funding of 9/11 Pentagon attackers

Saudi-supported 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar

Headline:  Saudis threaten to sell US assets if they’re held responsible for role in 9/11.

Are we supposed to give a shit if they do?  Please let the door hit them on the way out.

Al Qaeda operatives Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had their rent in San Diego paid by a Saudi agent in 2000.  The duo appeared to receive less funding from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad than the other 9/11 hijackers, suggesting that KSM knew their expenses were taken care of.  In 2001, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 to ram it into the Pentagon, killing 184 people.

Saudi Arabia may have funded additional 9/11 preparations in Florida, but that is classified.  If the U.S. discloses this classified information, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia promises to sell off its American assets.  Is that supposed to scare us?

From Jihad Watch and Fox News on Apr. 16:

Saudis threaten to sell US assets if they’re held responsible for role in 9/11

Their role is obvious; the pages detailing their role in the 9/11 Commission Report wouldn’t have been classified for all these years if it were innocuous. Now they’re threatening blackmail unless we continue to toe the line. It’s long past time to end this sham alliance with the government that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to enflame the jihad around the world.

“Report: Saudis vow to sell US assets if Congress decides gov was involved in 9/11,” FoxNews.com, April 16, 2016:

Saudi Arabia has reportedly told the Obama administration and congressional leaders that it will sell billions of dollars in U.S. financial assets if Congress passes a bill to make the Saudi government legally responsible for any role in the 9/11 attacks.

The administration has tried to stop Congress from passing the legislation, a bipartisan Senate bill, since Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir last month told Washington lawmakers his country’s position, according to The New York Times.

Al-Jubeir purportedly informed the lawmakers during a trip to Washington that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell as much as $750 billion in Treasury securities and other American financial assets on the world market, fearing the legislation could become law and U.S. courts would then freeze the assets.

The revelations about the Saudis’ ultimatum come several days after reports that President Obama will soon decide whether to declassify 28 pages of sealed documents suspected of showing a Saudi connection to the deadly 9/11 terror attacks.

Former Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham told Fox News on Tuesday that the White House told him a decision on whether to declassify the documents would be made within 60 days…

Supreme Court: Iran must pay up

Two of three branches of the American government agree that Iran owes money to the families of the victims of its state sponsored terrorism.  Congress passed a law requiring that frozen Iranian assets be used to satisfy a judgment against Iran.  Iran argued that Congress overstepped.  Six of eight justices weren’t buying it.  The court ruled that Congress was within its authority to require satisfaction of the judgment.

This is a victory for at least some of the victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism.  Now if we could just get the Obama administration to recognize that ALL of Iran’s victims should be compensated before more funds are released to the rogue regime through sanctions relief.

From Reuters (with a hat tip to Zadok):

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.

The court’s 6-2 ruling dealt a setback to Iran’s central bank, finding that the U.S. Congress did not usurp the authority of American courts by passing a 2012 law stating that the frozen funds should go toward satisfying a $2.65 billion judgment won by the families against Iran in U.S. federal court in 2007.

Bank Markazi had challenged a 2014 ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the assets, bonds held in a trust account overseen by former federal judge Stanley Sporkin, should be handed over to the more than 1,000 American plaintiffs.

With the legal questions resolved, lawyers for the plaintiffs said all that is left is for a federal judge to allow Sporkin to distribute the funds.

The lead plaintiff was Deborah Peterson, whose brother, Marine Lance Corporal James Knipple, died in the Beirut bombing…

Eye on terror finance: suggested reading

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• Another anti-Israel Gaza flotilla will be sponsored by the Turkish front charity IHH… more>>

• For $500 you can buy a hacked corporate email inbox… more>>

• A new bill proposed by senators Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk would prohibit offshore U.S. dollar clearing by Iran… more>>

ISIS profits from Christians’ jizya

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is partially funding itself from taxes on Christians in Raqqa, the center of ISIS’s control in Syria.  The jizya is a centuries old tax imposed by Islam against Christians and Jews in accordance with the plain text of the Koran.  The jizya is dangerous not only because it discriminates against non-Muslims, but because it is often used in modern days as a revenue source by Islamic terrorist groups.

Those in the West who support religious freedom and equal protection under the law, and those who claim that we should “follow the money” when any nefarious activities are observed, have an obligation to speak out against the jizya anytime and anywhere it appears.

From Newsweek:

…It was previously thought by many that the entire Christian population of Raqqa had fled the city or had been killed by ISIS after it ousted Syrian troops in January 2014. Yet, several families remain in the city after paying a jizya (tax) and signing a dhimma (sharia social contract) that prevents them being killed by the radical Islamists.

“There are a couple of families left in Raqqa. I was surprised,” says Nuri Kino, founder and president of A Demand For Action, a group advocating the protection of ethnoreligious minorities such as Assyrians and Yazidis in the Middle East.

“I spoke to a Syriac man who only left Raqqa about six weeks ago. He turned up at an association in Germany. It turns out that some families actually are in Raqqa, paying jizya and are being protected by their former neighbors, Sunni Muslim neighbors, as long as they follow the Sharia laws.”

Muslims who lived in the city prior to ISIS’s arrival are protecting the Christians—who have been the subject of some ISIS propaganda releases in the city; for example, having the Quran read to them—from death at the hands of the radical Islamists.

“They have a document that they have with them wherever they go, that says they are protected by the Sharia, by the court, that they have been to the court, that they are paying jizya and that they also have some kind of sponsor or protector.”

The jizya and the dhimma allows minorities protection from a brutal death as dictated by the group’s radical strand of Islamic law. The group has implemented it in other areas of Syria, such as the Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn. The ultra-conservative group considers ancient religious minorities, such as Syriac Catholics, Assyrians and Yazidis, to be kafir (disbelievers) and infidels.

Such rules in the social contract include prayers being forbidden in public, prayers at home not being loud enough so that others can hear them, the outlawing of renovations to churches, not showing religious symbols and the outlawing of the ringing of church bells…

Terror plotting news: suggested reading

• Al Qaeda in Syria seizes weapons from Western-backed rebels… more>>

• U.S. indicts 7 Iranians who hacked 46 American banks… more>>

• Documents seized from ISIS show Turkey gave their fighters safe passage to Syria… more>>

• Belgium’s alleged Muslim Brotherhood front is funded by Qatar Charity… more>>

Terror planner says Pakistan paid him

David Headley, a Pakistani with U.S. citizenship, served as the lead scout for the Nov. 26 terrorist attacks against Mumbai, India.  Headley was convicted for his crimes in the U.S. in 2013.  As evidence at his trial indicated, Headley was paid by the ISI, Pakistan’s spy agency, to conduct the Mumbai reconnaissance.  Headley has repeated this version of events again during remote video testimony for his trial in India.  Headley also worked for the Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.  What does that tell you about the shared interests of the ISI and the LeT?

From Foreign Policy‘s South Asia Daily brief:

David Headley: ISI paid me for reconnaissance for 26/11 targets

A U.S. citizen convicted for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks told an Indian court on Thursday that the Pakistani intelligence service ISI paid him directly for reconnaissance of target for the 26/11 attacks (CNN-IBN). In his testimony given through video link from the United States, Headley claimed that he was given one hundred thousand Pakistani rupees to scout National Defence College, Chabad House, and other places in Mumbai. Last month, Headley also told the court that he had visited India seven times prior to the attack, on behalf of the banned Pakistani militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), to gather information scouting potential target locations in Mumbai ahead of the attacks. Headley, 52, was captured in 2013 in the United States and plead guilty to charges of working with LeT and his involvement in the attacks, to avoid the death penalty and extradition to India. The November 2008 attacks in Mumbai were a coordinated set of strikes on the railway station, luxury hotels and a Jewish cultural center, and claimed 166 lives along with nine attackers.