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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Report: al-Qaida Made Pre-9/11 Diamond Buy |
| 2004-08-08 |
| A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by U.N.-backed prosecutors obtained by The Associated Press. The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaida laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive. Al-Qaida figures, including some already wanted in pre-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets, dealt directly with then-President Charles Taylor and other leaders and warlords in the West African country of Liberia from 1999 onwards, according to the accounts. The witnesses told of meetings and sightings in the seedy hotels and safehouses of Monrovia, the blighted capital of what was then a rogue nation. Al Qaida's alleged aim: snapping up diamonds in order to have easily convertible, untraceable resources after the first U.S.-led moves freezing al-Qaida bank accounts and other conventional assets worldwide in 1999. Claims of al-Qaida's Africa diamond links remain one of the most unsettled areas in international investigations into the terror group, splitting U.S. officials and the intelligence community on the quantity and quality of the evidence. The dossier, apparently prepared by U.N.-backed investigators for presentation recently to the Sept. 11 commission and other officials in Washington, moves the matter forward. It shows that sources interviewed by prosecutors are corroborating in detail accounts of links between al-Qaida and West Africa that news media and independent watchdog groups have previously reported. |
| Posted by:Fred |