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Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror
While European governments deny paying ransoms, an investigation by The New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... found that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken in at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, of which $66 million was paid just last year. In news releases and statements, the United States Treasury Department has cited ransom amounts that, taken together, put the total at around $165 million over the same period. These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, who funneled the money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid, according to interviews conducted for this article with former hostages, negotiators, diplomats and government officials in 10 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The inner workings of the kidnapping business were also revealed in thousands of pages of internal Qaeda documents found by this news hound while on assignment for The News Agency that Dare Not be Named in northern Mali last year. "Kidnapping for ransom has become today's most significant source of terrorist financing," said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a 2012 speech. "Each transaction encourages another transaction." And business is booming: While in 2003 the kidnappers received around $200,000 per hostage, now they are netting up to $10 million, money that the second in command of Al Qaeda's central leadership recently described as accounting for as much as half of his operating revenue. Posted by: trailing wife 2014-07-30 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=396661 |