Biggest prior terrorist attack on France funded by Algerian from London

Before the Charlie Hebdo massacre yesterday, the last major terrorist attacks on French soil were the Paris transit bombings of 1995. Those attacks, which killed eight and injured 150, were carried out by the Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA), an Algerian jihadist group. The mastermind of the GIA bombings was Rachid Ramda, an Algerian living in the U.K. at the time who the British then detained but refused to extradite to France until 10 years later. The delay in Ramda’s extradition was allegedly because of Great Britain’s “Londonistan” policy of not wanting to offend Muslim investors and immigrants even to the point of jeopardizing public safety. Ramda was eventually convicted on several charges over the Paris bombings, including the financing of the attacks which involved a wire transfer from Ramda to onsite bomber Ait Ali Belkacem. Here’s a look back at coverage of Ramda’s conviction by Reuters from 2007:

French court convicts Algerian of Paris bombings

A French court jailed Algerian Rachid Ramda for life on Friday for his role in financing a spate of bomb attacks on the Paris underground rail network that killed eight people and wounded 200 others in 1995.

Paris Assizes Court ordered that Ramda should serve a minimum 22 years behind bars for his role in the attacks, the worst bombings on mainland France since World War Two.

Court president Didier Wacogne, sitting with six professional assessors, said Ramda was “guilty of complicity to murder and attempted murder” as well as an array of explosives and other offences.

Around 70 relatives and friends of victims of the attacks were present for the verdict which was met in silence.

Ramda, 38, who denied the charges, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2006 for terrorist conspiracy linked to the same bombing campaign.

His lawyer Sebastien Bonot protested during the case that Ramda was being tried a second time for the same crime, and said after Friday’s verdict that his client would appeal.

“This decision is certainly not a surprise but we feel that justice and the law have not been done,” he told reporters.

The prosecution said Ramda was a key figure in Algeria’s radical Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and added that phone taps showed he was in regular contact with Ali Touchent and Boualem Bensaid, the GIA’s coordinators in France.

A police search of Ramda’s London address produced a Western Union payment slip bearing his fingerprints which showed he had sent 5,000 pounds ($10,250) to the Paris bombers…

The source of the Charlie Hebdo attackers’ weapons and money are not yet known.

De-funding jihad from England: suggested reading

Here’s a round-up of news stories that we didn’t have time to cover in the latter half of 2014 about British authorities’ efforts to crackdown on fundraising for jihadists overseas…

• The UK Charity Commission has frozen the bank account of Viva Palestina, an aid group that has delivered cash to Hamas (h/t El Grillo)… more>>

• Police are trying to trace the network that raised the €20,000 for Amal El-Wahabi to send to her husband to fight infidels and apostates in Syria… more>>

• British bureaucracy led to a two month delay in applying sanctions against Kuwaiti men who sent piles of money to the Islamic State (h/t BPA)… more>>

• The Charity Commission is investigating 86 groups for terrorist financing risks, with 37 of them active in Syria… more>>

Welfare for jihad: suggested reading

• British police are warning that fraudulent claims for student loans have been used to fund terrorist activities in “a number of cases”… more>>

• Of the hundred plus Muslims who have left Denmark to wage jihad on the battlefield in Syria, at least 28 of them have been receiving unemployment insurance benefits of up to 800 Danish crowns a day… more>>

• Grappling with similar problems in Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is introducing a bill to revoke public benefits such as social security and health insurance for terrorists and their families… more>>

• In case you missed it, reports like these are the reason why Money Jihad supports a requirement for government agencies to conduct due diligence on public benefit applicants to guage the risk that those benefits will be used to finance terrorism… more>>

World’s biggest Islamic charity branded as terrorist group by 2nd Middle East country

Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates, the second Middle Eastern country to do so within the past five months. In June, IRW was declared illegal by Israel for being a financial conduit to Hamas, and it was banned from operating in Israel and the West Bank.

The Birmingham, England-based IRW is the largest international Islamic charity in the world with a £155 million (240 million USD) budget in 2013.  IRW has over 280 employees and is active in more than 30 countries.  IRW maintains over a dozen affiliates throughout the world, each with multi-million dollar operating budgets of their own including Islamic Relief USA, which is the largest Islamic charity in America.

IRW accepted a $50,000 check from Osama Bin Laden in 1999, had a Gaza program coordinator who aided Hamas from 2005-06, received over £60K from an Al Qaeda front group from 2003-08, has leaders who are closely aligned with the global Muslim Brotherhood, and had programs staffed by Hamas personnel in the Palestinian territories as recently as this year.  Supporters of IRW have noted that the UK’s charitable regulator has not confirmed the evidence against IRW; however, a 2013 audit found that the Charity Commission is understaffed, too passive in its investigations, and is generally unfit for its regulatory duties.

UAE calls 15 Muslim groups in the West “terrorists”

In addition to the IRW designation, the UAE named 15 other Islamic charities and advocacy groups in the U.S. and Europe as terrorist entities:

• Islamic Relief UK (the British affiliate of IRW)
• Muslim Association of Britain (part of the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood)
• Cordoba Foundation in Britain (once described by David Cameron as a Muslim Brotherhood front group)
• Council on American-Islamic Relations (the self-described civil rights group which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-financing trial)
• Muslim American Society (which was created by the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood)
• Union of Islamic Organizations of France (a French Muslim group tied to the Muslim Brotherhood that profits from halal certification)
• Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (an alliance financed by Gulf sources with ties to Hamas)
• Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (the “main representative” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany)
• Associazione Musulmani Italiani (Italian Muslim Association)
• League of Muslims in Belgium (La Ligue des Musulmans de Belgique)
• Muslim Association of Sweden (Sveriges muslimska förbund)
• Islamic Society in Denmark (Islamsk Trossamfund)
• Islamic Council Norway (Islamsk Rad Norge)
• Finnish Islamic Association (Suomen Islam-seurakunta)
• CANVAS in Belgrade, Serbia

The UAE designated over 80 groups overall, most of which are located in the Middle East.  The practical effect of the designations are limited, designed for “transparency” and to “raise awareness.”  In other words, the designations include not asset freezes, travel bans, or prohibitions on transacting business with the designated groups.

New moves afoot to choke off terror money

• The U.S. takes aim at ISIS’s black market oil buyers… more>>

• Britain grants more powers to its charity regulator, including the power to remove dubious trustees from charitable boards (h/t @ConorMLarkin)… more>>

• Austrian law will ban foreign funding of imams… more>>

• The U.S. Rewards for Justice program of paying informants is still helping catch and kill terrorists… more>>

• Bulk cash smugglers beware–there’s a new system to detect the presence of excessive currency at border checkpoints… more>>

HSBC closes accounts: 2 Islamic nonprofits and 1 mosque

HSBC has closed the accounts of the Islamic charity Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT), the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, and an Islamic advocacy group called the Cordoba Foundation. The closures are part of the British bank’s effort to improve compliance with U.S. and British regulations and after being heavily criticized and fined in 2012 for being too lax about the customers and correspondent banks it chose to do business with.

UWT’s accounts were closed by Barclays in 2009. A student group has reported that UWT has conducted projects together with the Al-Salah Islamic Association, a Hamas front. The Finsbury Park Mosque was formerly pastored by hate preacher and jihadist Abu Hamza. The Cordoba Foundation advocates for Palestinian causes, invited a guest to speak from the radical group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and is run by a member of Britain’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Alex Brummer, city editor of the Daily Mail, offers this insightful analysis of HSBC’s move:

The notion that HSBC is closing down the bank accounts of Muslim groups and charities because of some kind of Islamophobia could not be more wide of the mark.

Britain’s biggest and most international bank is engaged in a determined effort to clean up its reputation and preserve its banking licenses in the United States after settling charges of money laundering and sanctions busting brought by the US Justice Department.

A coruscating 2012 report by the powerful Senate sub-Committee on Investigations found that HSBC had exposed the US ‘financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-laundering controls’.

The bank subsequently agreed to pay £1.12billion ($1.9billion) in fines to settle the claims and was given a five year probationary period to clean up its act.

Under the chairmanship of the redoubtable Scotsman Douglas Flint, who has been in charge of HSBC since 2010, it has rigorously sought to eliminate the risks of further money laundering charges that might put in danger its American banking licenses.

It has ruthlessly closed down branches, cancelled relationships with overseas banks and shut down the accounts of customers that might conceivably be regarded as risky because of links to money laundering, sanctions busting or potential terrorist activities.

In the troubled Middle East alone, it has doubled the number of compliance officers—internal enforcers—to 3,500 over the two years since it reached a settlement with the American authorities…

Improving the bank’s standards has been hugely expensive, with the global cost of the internal enforcement operation climbing to £296million ($500 million) a year…

Among the relationships that HSBC has severed, as it has gone about its task, is that with the Vatican Bank, recently renamed the Institute for the Works of Religion, because of its past association with money laundering. Such a move involving a prominent Roman Catholic institution strongly suggests Muslim causes and accounts have not been singled out as HSBC seeks to rebuild its reputation in Washington…

If HSBC could be accused of anything it is of being over-cautious in its dealings with the authorities and its elimination of potentially risky clients.

Thanks to Rushette for sending in the news.

UK: 3 more arrests in front charity terror case

Three more middlemen in the financial pipeline from Britain to Syrian terrorists have been arrested in an ongoing investigation. Four charities, which likely include Aid Convoy (an Islamist front charity), have been cited in the probe, and a total of 12 men have been detained for their involvement.

News reports are referring to this terrorist financing case as “fraud,” although no evidence has yet been made public that anybody has been defrauded. It is possible that the donors, the leadership of the charities involved, and their beneficiaries in Syria all knew that the money was intended to fund violent activities against Bashar al-Assad and his supporters.

The website ThirdSector has a few more details on the latest arrests here: “Three more arrested for alleged charity fraud with links to terrorism in Syria.”