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| Southeast Asia |
| Bad guys turning to crime to fund operations |
| 2005-12-22 |
| New investigations into the financing of extremist causes and terrorism have disclosed closer links to both local and cross-border crime than experts previously had believed. A source familiar with the results of recent investigations into terrorism financing in Southeast Asia, said: ''Radical leaders and groups may be turning more and more to crime in some sort of desperate attempt to get funding. But the more likely explanation is that crime and extreme terrorism always was a natural partnership'' which has expanded in recent years. The latest round of investigations began last month, when the National Intelligence Agency sent a special task force to look into how extremists were supporting the insurgency against local agencies and the national government. The results so far have been mixed. Experts from four agencies have pooled their reports, and agree there is no hard evidence of involvement by the most notorious international terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah. ''The various teams have been pretty well unanimous in a month of investigations,'' said the source. ''The funding for southern violence is local. The bad news is that it includes some Malaysian money as well as funds from the South, and from gangs in Bangkok.'' The Thai investigators were from the Revenue Department, the Anti-Money Laundering Office and the Office of the Narcotics Control Board, coordinated by criminal investigators from the police. They reported strong evidence of direct links between criminal gangs, self-styled Islamists and separatists. Most of the money for arms, bombs, training, transportation and other demands of the violent groups comes from two sources, the investigators have concluded _ drug trafficking and strong-arm extortion, usually from small companies made to pay criminals as ''insurance'' against violence or arson against the company or its employees. ''A certain number of the killings and attacks in the South are punishment against people or companies who refuse to pay up,'' the source explained. He described it as a circular chain of dependency, where criminal gangs give money to anti-government groups to commit violence, which allows the criminal gangs to intimidate more people or companies. But Islamist groups and leaders are directly involved in southern drug trafficking, the investigators concluded _ often with corrupt police or soldiers who are supposedly fighting the insurgents. Similar criminal-terrorism links have been found in almost every serious investigation into how extremists support themselves and get access to funds for major terrorist attacks. The JI operations chief Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, reportedly was carrying $70,000 in cash when he was arrested in Ayutthaya more than two years ago. Experts have back-tracked the cash to a network of funding _ from the facilities of the al-Qaeda main group, from the JI wing in Australia, from criminal rings in Indonesia and the Philippines, and elsewhere. Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston and a recognised expert on militant Islam in Southeast Asia, wrote two years ago that al-Qaeda considered the Asean region as their ''back office, [because of] loosely regulated financial sectors and pervasive money laundering and smuggling networks.'' In fact, more than 13 years ago Osama bin Laden personally dispatched his brother-in-law Mohammad Jamal Khalifa to set up the militant Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, using money skimmed from Islamic charities and at least one supposedly legitimate exporting firm _ a terrorist white-collar criminal. Ten years on, said Mr Abuza, al-Qaeda's subsidiary for Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, steals money from Islamic charities, skims legitimate donations to mosques and conducts bank and store robberies to help build terrorist accounts. Exactly a year ago, details surfaced showing Malaysians in Kelantan state sympathetic to Thai separatists, had embezzled 1.2 million ringgit (12.6 million baht) from the Malaysian Muslim Welfare Organisation, and channelled at least some of it to militants in Thailand, identified in the Malaysian media as Pulo. Investigating terrorist funding, already a difficult task, is particularly hard in South and Southeast Asia because the criminals and terrorists are so close, investigators believe. But beyond local alliances with gangsters as in the Thai South, international and foreign investigations have found consistent links between terrorism and crime that are growing. In Indonesia, the Central Java police chief, Inspector-General Chaerul Rasyid, said recently that Islamic clerics have told the government extremists are specifically recruiting Muslim petty criminals into the pro-terrorist groups. While early terrorist attacks in Bali and Jakarta involved known Islamist champions as planners and suicide bombers, recruiting tactics by extremist groups have changed. Pol Gen Rasyid said terrorists have recently recruited 35 new suicide bombers _ but were concentrating on boosting the ranks of their gangs with ''criminals and drug addicts to help them carry out their attacks''. In Paris last month, authorities said they were stunned to discover that when hundreds of officers conducted a multi-city sweep that broke up an Islamic terrorist network in two places near Paris, and reportedly stopped terrorist attacks before they occurred, more than half of the 20 men arrested were common criminals known to have been involved in armed robberies and similar violent crime. Investigations continue. Ouassini Cherifi, a French-Algerian convicted in 2002 of trafficking in fake passports, is reportedly assisting French authorities. Counterfeit passports, of course, are a major and necessary part of the 21st century's terrorist travel packet. This is a common meeting place for terrorists and criminals, and Thailand has been accused of being the world centre for passport forgery and trafficking. Cherifi had known connections to Thailand-based forgery rings, and had just served a five-year prison sentence for selling fake passports made in Thailand and used by militants to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan for terrorist training. Last Oct 14, the criminal court jailed Algerian Atamnia Yacine, 33, for forging and trying to sell 180 passports. Anti-terrorist experts say his customers included the British terrorists who attacked the London subway on July 7, although no charges have been officially laid against him for that. Yacine had fake Spanish passports when he was arrested. Last January, police arrested Mahieddine Daikh of Bangladesh, said to be a top passport trafficker, and the source of the fake Spanish passport used by Hambali as he evaded authorities in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand. ''Terrorists have a harder and harder time getting the money they need to train, travel and attack,'' said the source. ''They will continue getting closer and closer to criminals and organised crime, which can provide them with cash. In return, the terrorists will have to provide muscle and protection for the criminals. It is a circle the terrorists can't break now, even though it is fantastically anti-Muslim to commit crimes or consort with criminals.'' |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Turning to crime? yeah, whatever. These bastards will take money wherever they can get it. If they could generate $$$ for terror by forming a Bin Laden Full monty brigade they would. These assholes just don't want to get real jobs, they want to be heroes and live the fun life of an international terrorists where wifey aint bitchin and moanin about the stale bread and whiney ass kids. Although I'd probably take the wifey over the fun they get when the piper comes to call. Oh, but that's right 70 virgins, uh huh. EP |
| Posted by: ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding 2005-12-22 17:18 |
| #1 I thought that this was Standard Operating Procedure for most AQ terror cells, with the 9/11 group being an exception. |
| Posted by: Glains Theash7392 2005-12-22 05:29 |