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| Down Under |
| Aussie company sold equipment to al-Qaeda |
| 2005-08-30 |
| An Adelaide-based communications company thought to have unwittingly supplied equipment to al-Qaeda says it has never been aware of selling to any terrorist group. ABC radio today reported it had documents showing a man it named as al-Qaeda operative Mohamedou Slahi had ordered radio communications equipment from Codan Limited in 2001. The documents reportedly show that Slahi made a payment to Codan in May 2001 for unspecified goods. A detailed quote was then prepared for more than $32,000 worth of equipment, and there may have been other transactions. Codan managing director Mike Heard said company policy did not allow him to confirm whether Slahi was a customer, but said the company tried to ensure its equipment did not fall into the wrong hands. "Codan's policy is to never knowingly supply any product to any person or organisation we have reason to believe is engaged in terrorism or for that matter any other criminal activity," he said. "Particularly since September 11, Codan routinely checks the US Department of State and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs website lists (of known terrorist organisations)." Mr Heard said Codan took additional steps to try to ensure its equipment did not fall into the wrong hands and had no knowledge of this ever having occurred. "We regularly visit the countries where we do business and make our own judgments about our dealers and customers," he said. "We attempt to build relationships, of course, particularly with our dealers and other channels, but also we attempt to work through them to end users and that allows us to make certain judgments about who they are and what they do. We've never ever had what I would call first-hand knowledge that a customer or a potential customer was a terrorist and I guess you'll appreciate that unless we were a specialist security organisation it would be very hard for us to accurately form that view." Slahi, who reportedly ran an internet cafe in Mauritania and used a number of aliases, is suspected of having been involved in the September 11 terror attacks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |