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Feds: B'klyn Mosque Money Part Of $20M Terror Effort
By Anthony M. DeStefano
Staff Writer
March 4, 2003, 8:19 PM EST
A Brooklyn mosque was part of an international fund-raising effort led by a “terrorist financier” who claimed to have funneled $20 million to Osama bin Laden, federal authorities charged Tuesday.
U.S. officials are seeking the extradition of two Yemeni men being held in Germany on charges they plotted to provide money — some of it raised at the Al Farouq mosque on Atlantic Avenue — to al-Qaida and Hamas terrorists.
Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed were arrested in January as a result of a joint U.S.-German probe made public Tuesday, and officials heralded the case as another coup against terrorism, coming on the heels of the arrest in Pakistan of suspected al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
“This is another big step in our war against terrorism and by cutting off the flow of money and materials we can cripple terrorist organizations,” said U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf in Brooklyn.
Investigators said Al-Moayad, 54, bragged to confidential informants that he had personally delivered $20 million to bin Laden. Al-Moayad also said that he had received money for the “jihad” from collections at the Al Farouq mosque, officials alleged.
“As in organized crime investigations, the primary tool is to follow the money,” said FBI New York chief Kevin Donovan. “Mobsters use violence to make money, terrorists use money to make violence.”
The complaint charged that associates of Al-Moayad said that in December 1999 some donations were collected at the Al Farouq mosque — which gained notoriety for its association with Sheik Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric convicted in 1995 for plotting to bomb New York landmarks — although the court document said the money was for “20 families who needed to be sponsored.”
“They did their own fund-raising right in our backyard in Brooklyn,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. “The lesson in this is stay out of Brooklyn, stay out of New York.”
Mauskopf labeled Al-Moayad a “terrorist financier” who boasted of his terrorist ties. The complaint charging him with conspiracy identified him as being an official within the Islah political party in Yemen and an imam, or spiritual advisor, of the al-Ihsan Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen. Zayed, 29, was identified in court documents as being a secretary of Al-Moayad.
The arrests resulted from an FBI sting that used two confidential informants. As outlined in the complaints, the informants met with Al-Moayad beginning in December 2001. One said that Al-Moayad said he regularly provided money to support mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Kashmir.
The informant cultivated a relationship with Al-Moayad through 2002 and told him he wanted to donate $ 2 million to fund terror, the complaint said. With Al-Moayad, the informant attended a mass wedding for young Yemeni men about to join the jihad last September with him in Sanaa, the complaint stated. During the festivities, one Hamas leader spoke in glowing terms about a bus bombing in Tel Aviv which killed several people that day, the complaint said.
The complaint against Al-Moayad outlined a series of financial transactions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars by his associates that investigators believed were designed to evade laws on financial reporting. The complaint also outlined a number of fund-raising activities, some involving a Yemeni sheikh and associate of Al-Moayad, which investigators believe tie in with the alleged conspiracy.
His alleged statement about giving millions to support bin Laden was made in a conversation with an informant that was not recorded, the complaint stated. The criminal complaints did not detail any direct ties between fund-raising and specific acts of terror.
But Mauskopf noted that if the money involved was traced to an incident that led to a loss of life, Al-Maoyad and Zayed could face life in prison. They face terms of 60 years and 30 years respectively if convicted of conspiring to provide support to a terror organization.
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Romans 9:11-24
Our Eschatology may vary even our Ecclesiology may be disputed among us but our Soteriology most assume a singularity and exclusivity which in biblical term is known as Quote; "The Narrow Way" and Quote!
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