WAR ON TERROR
Saudis join funding probe
Joint task force will station U.S. agents in kingdom
August 26, 2003
worldnetdaily.com
Saudi Arabia is opening its doors to United States law enforcement officials for the first time, as part of a new joint effort to stem the funds flow to terror groups like al-Qaida.
The Washington Post reports the two countries are in the process of setting up a joint task force that will station U.S. agents in the desert kingdom to mine information from bank accounts, computer records and other financial data to track and shut down terror financing. Senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Intelligence and the Internal Revenue Service are flying to Riyadh today to work out the operational details.
According to the paper, al-Qaida's suicide bombings on residential compounds in Riyadh, which killed 34 people, spurred the apparent increased cooperation on the part of the Saudis in the U.S.-led war on terror. A joint Saudi-U.S. intelligence task force was set up to track the perpetrators of those May attacks. This task force is described as the "template" for the current endeavor.
Word of the joint task force comes amid a CIA report that fingers Saudi Arabia as the leading financier of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq claiming the lives of American soldiers daily.
Saudi cooperation has been heavily questioned. The kingdom has dragged its heels in freezing assets tied to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who hails from Saudi.
Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
And the recently released congressional report on the 9-11 attacks accused the Saudi government of financing al-Qaida operations through Saudi-based charities.
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan donated millions of dollars to bin Laden's favorite charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO. And tens of thousands of dollars in donations made by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, also ended up in the hands of two al-Qaida operatives who later became hijackers.
According to a report prepared for the United Nations and released in February, Saudi Arabia has transferred $500 million to al-Qaida over the past decade and Saudi dollars still represent the most important source of financing for bin Laden's terror network.
The 34-page analysis of French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard, who was asked to study the issue by the U.N. Security Council, found that despite pressure from the U.S. Riyadh had failed to turn off the spigot.
WorldNetDaily reported the House of Saud has also donated more than $4 billion to Palestinian "Mujahideen fighters" over the past five years to help finance offensive terrorist operations against Israel.
"One must question the real ability and willingness of the kingdom to exercise any control over the use of religious money in and outside of the country," investigator Brisard concluded in his report.
WND reported earlier this month that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on Riyadh to remove a powerful member of the Saudi royal family for failing to police terrorist funding. Schumer wrote a letter to Prince Bandar demanding Prince Nayef ibn Abdulaziz, the Saudi interior minister who oversees the kingdom's anti-terrorism efforts, be replaced. Prince Nayef is the same official who blamed the "Zionist" lobby for the 9-11 attacks.
Twenty-eight pages of the 800-page congressional report the Bush administration refused to declassify is said to detail suspected ties between the Sept. 11 hijackers and agents of the Saudi government. Congressional sources claim the report was delayed for months over arguments with the Bush administration on details of Saudi involvement with al-Qaida.
The Saudis consistently and adamantly proclaim themselves as a "vigilant" partner with the U.S. in the terror war.
"We have been vigilant in trying to choke off the financing for terrorists and those who engage in terrorism, because we believe that the most important part in the international effort against terrorism is to choke them of their financing and to handicap their abilities to do damage to innocent people," said Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, at a December press conference in Washington, D.C. "Saudi Arabia and the United States have been the two countries that have worked the closest in the war on terrorism, with all due respect to naysayers."
As proof of its commitment, al-Jubeir pointed to the creation of a high commission for oversight of charities that would conduct audits.
In addition to mounting a PR offensive, the Saudis are spending millions to fight a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by relatives of Sept. 11 victims. Sept. 11 families seek to further document the claim that certain Saudis and Saudi-backed organizations knowingly supported the Taliban and al-Qaida. Their case rests on the legal theory that those who knowingly fund terrorist organizations are liable for the damage done by those groups.
Senior government officials view the new joint task force as a test for the Saudis.
"I don't think there is a more immediate way to test the joint resolve of our countries than to have a joint investigative unit, with the linguistic and computer resources of both our countries, that is capable of focusing on specific targets, rather than talking in generalities," David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's counsel general who helped negotiate the agreement, told the Post. "We now have a testable proposition of people's resolve."
The Post reports the task force evolved from a July telephone call between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah.
While the official Bush administration position is that Saudi Arabia is a partner in the war on terrorism, WND reported it quietly added the kingdom to its watch list of terrorist-sponsoring countries subject to immigration restrictions. An INS policy implemented last October required the fingerprinting, photographing and monitoring of men, ages 16 to 45, who enter the U.S. from Saudi Arabia.
The move drew heavy fire from outraged Saudis. |
