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| East/Subsaharan Africa |
| Islamic Terrorists Have Found A New Home In South Africa |
| 2002-12-11 |
| Mohamed Suleman Vaid's career as a money courier for suspected terrorists might still be going strong had he not stuffed $40,000 in South African currency down his underpants. On April 25, 2001, Mr. Vaid, his drawers weighed down by almost five pounds of cash, tried to cross South Africa's frontier with Swaziland but was stopped when a policeman noticed him "walking awkwardly,". After a quick search, police found Mr. Vaid's stash and another $90,000 in rand jammed into the pockets of a specially designed bodysuit worn by his wife, Moshena, underneath a long black hijab that covered all but her eyes. Before getting caught, Mr. Vaid had traveled from his home in this balmy Indian Ocean port city through Swaziland to neighboring Mozambique 150 times in 18 months, according to South African investigators. Police say phone records show that sometimes before he left South Africa, Mr. Vaid called a money-changing company in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, that has links to gold dealers in Dubai . South African intelligence officials say the money seized that day, 1.2 million rand -- a whopping sum in local terms -- was destined for a Mozambican businessman of Lebanese origin with dual Czech-Mozambican nationality. The officials believe that businessman is connected to Islamic extremists in Africa and the Middle East. "There is now suspicion that the money taken to Mozambique was being taken for some sinister purpose," says Monty Moodley, the regional head of South Africa's Asset Forfeiture Unit, which has seized the money. The purpose that Mr. Moodley and other law-enforcement officials suspect is the funding of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network in the months before Sept. 11. The case has assumed a new vigor in the aftermath of last month's terror attacks against Israelis in Kenya. There is growing concern by both South African and American law-enforcement officials that Islamist extremists, including al Qaeda, are using South Africa's open society as a safe haven and a base to raise funds, launder money and plan terror operations. "Our guys are taking a careful look again at South Africa," said one senior U.S. official in Washington. "We are detecting so much smoke lately that something's got to be burning down there somewhere." Specifically, American and South African agents are investigating reports that various militant Islamist groups, including al Qaeda, are laundering money through South Africa, smuggling gold, diamonds and cash through its ports to Dubai and Pakistan, seeking recruits for training, and even possibly looking to obtain dangerous germs from South Africa's former biological-warfare scientists. The idea that South Africa is a potential haven for foreign Islamic militants first surfaced in a report prepared by the country's National Intelligence Agency for President Thabo Mbeki in 1998, after a local Muslim group exploded a bomb in a Planet Hollywood restaurant in Cape Town, killing one person. That bombing came just weeks after al Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The report offers evidence that Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, has been active in South Africa raising funds, organizing anti-Israel campaigns and recruiting local activists for military training in Pakistan since at least 1992. That was the year of a visit to South Africa by Sheikh Muhammed Mahmud Seyom, the former imam of Jerusalem's al Aqsa mosque who was exiled to Sudan in 1988. The report also claims that Hamas used a farm in northern South Africa in 1997 to conduct paramilitary training. Hamas is responsible for many of the suicide bombing attacks inside Israel. Al Qaeda's connections to South Africa apparently date back at least to September 1997, when an Islamic cleric from Pakistan, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzi, the "legal adviser" to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, visited South Africa to preach pro-Taliban, anti-American messages. Mufti Shamzi is a key supporter of Osama bin Laden and backed the al Qaeda leader's religious decree declaring war on Americans. Recently he and his religious school in Karachi, Pakistan, have been suspected of providing aid and refuge to al Qaeda fighters escaping Afghanistan. Investigators now suspect that Mufti Shamzi's trip to South Africa five years ago may have been aimed at expanding the Taliban-al Qaeda network for future strategic purposes, including finding refuge for fleeing operatives. Mufti Shamzi, through intermediaries at his school, declined repeated requests for an interview. Concern about al Qaeda fugitives coming to South Africa has been heightened by the recent attacks in Kenya. On Aug. 16, 1998, nine days after the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania, Khamis Khalfan Mohamed, an al Qaeda operative from Tanzania, fled to South Africa, using a false name and passport. South African Muslims helped Mr. Mohamed find a job flipping hamburgers at the Burger World restaurant in Cape Town, as well as a family to stay with. He might have remained in hiding indefinitely had an FBI agent not spotted his photo among a group of political-asylum applicants in South Africa. U.S. authorities arrested Mr. Mohamed on Oct. 6, 1999, to stand trial in New York for his role in the Tanzanian bombing. Mr. Mohamed was convicted along with three former comrades and is now serving a life sentence. There are signs al Qaeda may already be here in small numbers, aided and abetted by local radicals. South Africa is home to an indigenous population of 600,000 Muslims, many of them militant in their views toward the U.S. and Israel. The militancy of South African Muslims is well known elsewhere on the continent, not least in Kenya. Najib Balala, a former mayor of Mombasa and a leader of the political opposition on the Kenyan coast, told journalists after the Kenya attacks that as far as he knew the real concentration of al Qaeda on the continent was not in his country but in South Africa. "They have many more fanatics than we do," Mr. Balala said. Last year, one radical South African Muslim group, the Movement Against Illegitimate Leaders, or Mail, claimed that some 1,000 South Africans went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to help the Taliban against U.S.-led attacks. The group said that most of the volunteers had families in Pakistan and were sponsored with money collected at local mosques in Pretoria and from wealthy businessmen. Mail told local reporters that it started recruiting Muslim fighters to "fight for justice" in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Within weeks it claimed to have had 2,000 men ready for jihad. Jenny Irish, an independent consultant investigating organized crime in the Durban area, says that in the last two years the smuggling of illegal immigrants from Pakistan has picked up dramatically. Police and airport officials say many Pakistanis arrive in South Africa in transit from Dubai and Karachi and fail to make their connecting flights. "They just disappear," said Ms. Irish. "We keep hearing about safe houses in the Durban area which process these people and move them on." Mr. Jones, the former police intelligence chief who is now a security consultant to the South African government, believes some of the illegal immigrants are working hand-in-glove with Islamic jihad groups. Great, another place we have to keep watch on. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 As it turns out, Anon, the fellow was originally caught carrying $1 million, and his wife was carrying $3 million, all in small, untracable, unmarked bills. I don't know how it was that the reporter got those other numbers for his story. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-12-11 21:32:44 |
| #2 Amazing that the poor underpaid South African border guards didn't disappear this guy, his wife, and the cash. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-11 12:33:03 |
| #1 The Israelis have long and profitable ties with S Africa, the MOSSAD can cover this one. |
| Posted by: Brian 2002-12-11 10:52:56 |