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| Europe |
| Swiss Court OKs Bank Document Handover |
| 2004-10-16 |
| Switzerland approved on Friday the handover of bank documents to the United States on the source of a donation to a U.S.-based Islamic charity suspected of money laundering and recruiting terrorists over the Internet. The supreme court's decision allows Swiss authorities to override banking secrecy and provide documents, including those for a $300,000 transfer made May 14, 1998, from a Geneva bank to the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America. The decision was in response to a February 2003 U.S. government request for judicial assistance in its investigation of the assembly and its Idaho-based Saudi computer expert for suspected money laundering for terrorist financing. The Lausanne-based court did not name any suspects, but it was clear one of them was Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi who studied at the University of Idaho. He was acquitted last June by a U.S. District Court in Boise, Idaho, of U.S. charges he used his computer skills to foster terrorism on the Internet sites he ran for the assembly. The Swiss court said U.S. officials claimed the computer expert ran six bank accounts in the United States and used them to channel large sums to the assembly or its members. |
| Posted by:Fred |