Osama bin Laden has warned Barack Obama, the US president, that there will be further attacks on the United States unless he takes steps to resolve the Palestinian situation.
In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the al-Qaeda chief, praised the Nigerian accused of a failed attempt to blow up an airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day. "The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," Bin Laden said. "America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly. "Therefore, with God's will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel," bin Laden said. "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes."
The Obama administration said intelligence analysts had not confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader's voice was on the tape. But it quickly dismissed its significance. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, told CNN's State of the Union programme that "assuming that it is him, his message contains the same hollow justifications for the mass slaughters of innocents that we've heard before". "And the irony is that he's killed more Muslims than people from any other religion - he's a murderer," Axelrod added.
Phil Rees, the author of Dining with Terrorists, told Al Jazeera: "Bin Laden has a great sense of timing; it's a complete poke in the eye to President Obama at a time when Obama is domestically suffering. "The reference to Palestine is possibly the most interesting part of this because he almost now becomes the al-Qaeda leader that speaks about Palestine."What you've now got in Gaza is bin Laden looking at the situation where there's a peace process which is going nowhere, and in an ironic way, Hamas is at the frontline of the battle with al-Qaeda there."
Azzam Tamimi, a political analyst and the author of Hamas the Unwritten Chapters, said that bin Laden was simply using the Palestinian issue in an attempt to mobilise Muslims against the US. "I would say that al-Qaeda has not been able to set foot in many places in the Muslim world despite its rhetoric," he told Al Jazeera. "In Palestine they failed miserably and that is why I understand this message as a return to the older strategy of waging war against America and the world order in the skies. "It is very difficult to compete with an organisation like Hamas in Palestine."
Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for the Hamas movement, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians were focused on ending the Israeli occupation. "All Arabs and Muslims support our cause. [But] the Palestinian position is clear, the resistance is against the occupation, the Israeli army who is occupying and killing our people," he said. "Everyone knows that the policies of the US have created huge problems in the region. At this moment, we know who our enemy is - the Israeli occupation."Imtiaz Gul, the chairman of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, questioned whether the tape was genuine."I think the validity of this tape should be subjected to scrutiny because we haven't heard from Mr Bin Laden for quite some time."
In the attempted attack on Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab, who is now in US police custody, allegedly tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 made its final descent to Detroit. He had boarded the flight in Amsterdam, but purchased his tickets in Ghana on December 16. Passengers on the flight were able to overpower the would-be bomber as he attempted to ignite the explosive's fuse. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told police he had been directed by al-Qaeda and had obtained his explosive device in Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organisation's affiliate in Yemen, has said it armed Abdulmutallab, describing the attempted attack as revenge for the US role in a Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda. Obama has criticised his own intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the suspect which should have stopped him boarding the flight.
Source: Al Jazeera
Showing posts with label Osama Bin Laden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Osama Bin Laden. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Al-Awlaki's father says son is 'not Osama bin Laden'
His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al-Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen. "I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. As recently as Sunday, Yemeni officials including provincial governor Al Hasan al-Ahmadi claimed that al-Awlaki was hiding out in the southern mountains of Yemen with al Qaeda. "He's dead wrong. What do you expect my son to do? There are missiles raining down on the village. He has to hide. But he is not hiding with al Qaeda; our tribe is protecting him right now," insisted al-Awlaki's father in an exclusive interview with CNN. "My son is (a) wanted man, he's cornered, that's the problem I am facing," al-Awlaki said.The al-Awlaki family comes from the large and powerful Awalek tribe of southern Yemen. It has many connections to the government of Yemen, including the country's prime minister, who is a relative of the al-Awlaki family. Recently, Yemeni officials have also claimed that Anwar al-Awlaki had contact with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab during his stay in Yemen in late 2009. When asked if his son met with the man charged with trying to blow up a U.S.-bound plane on Christmas day, al-Awlaki's father said it's not likely. "I have no idea but I don't believe it," he said. But the United States has independent intelligence verifying that AbdulMutallab met with al-Awlaki somewhere in southern Yemen before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, according to a U.S. security official with knowledge of the intelligence.
Even if al-Awlaki is hiding out with his tribe in the mountains of southern Yemen, the official added, authorities have no doubt that he is a member of al Qaeda and is now one of the top five or six operatives in Yemen for the terrorist organization. The official said al-Awlaki's transformation from inspirational leader to operational recruiter for al Qaeda was first picked up in the early part of 2009. This official also noted that the United States believes he is still involved in trying to recruit more bombers to launch attacks.
His father, the elder al-Awlaki, is an accomplished academic and had held several positions within the Yemeni government, including minister of agriculture. He first went to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in the late '60s, and his son Anwar was born there in 1971. Al-Awlaki says he is doing what he can to coax his son out of hiding, but does not want to jeopardize his son's life. "I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said. "If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.
Al-Awlaki acknowledged his son has espoused some controversial views but all of them, he said, would be protected by freedom of speech provisions in the American Constitution. He denied his son has done anything to encourage terrorists to commit violent acts. "He is a preacher, you cannot tie Anwar to acts of terrorism," said al-Awlaki.
Al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not not set off alarm bells. The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the Washington, D.C., area. He said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam. "It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that," Anwar al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in Afghanistan." When asked why his son would praise Hasan, Nasser al-Awlaki said he did not agree with his son's views. "I don't think that's right what he said about Major Hasan's actions, but my son has been very upset by the violence against Muslims," said al-Awlaki.
Al-Awlaki does concede his son's views did seem more radical after he spent time in a Yemeni prison from 2006 to 2007 for suspected ties to terrorism. He was released for lack of evidence. "They put him in jail for 18 months and I detected a change after he got out of prison, he began to get away from the mainstream," al-Awlaki said. The father also warned that the aggressive hunt for his son and al Qaeda operatives in Yemen using missile strikes will only serve to recruit more members to the organization. "I don't want those American cowboys to destroy Yemen," said al-Awlaki before conceding that the hunt for al Qaeda in Yemen is now a global concern. He has been wrongly accused, it's unbelievable. He lived his life in America, he's an all-American boy. My son would love to go back to America, he used to have a good life in America. Now he's hiding in the mountains, he doesn't even have safe water to drink," al-Awlaki said.
Source: CNN
Friday, January 23, 2009
Ex-Gitmo Detainee Joins Al-Qaida in Yemen
A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen's al-Qaeda branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network. The announcement, made this week on a Web site commonly used by militants, came as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year. Many of the remaining detainees are from Yemen, which has long posed a vexing terrorism problem for the U.S.
The terror group's Yemen branch — known as "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen, which is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home. The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group's second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372. "He managed to leave the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia) and join his brothers in al-Qaida," the statement said.
Documents released by the U.S. Defense Department show that al-Shihri was released from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in November 2007 and transferred to his homeland. The documents confirmed his prisoner number was 372. Saudi Arabian authorities wouldn't immediately comment on the statement. A Yemeni counterterrorism official would only say that Saudi Arabia had asked Yemen to turn over a number of wanted Saudi suspects who fled the kingdom last year for Yemen, and a man with the same name was among those wanted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press and would not provide more details.
Yemen is a U.S. ally in the fight against terror, but it also has been the site of numerous high-profile, al-Qaida-linked attacks including the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors. Yemen's government struggles to maintain order. Many areas of the California-size country are beyond government control and Islamic extremism is strong. Nearly 100 Yemeni detainees remain at Guantanamo, making up the biggest group of prisoners.
Al-Shihri's case highlights the complexity of Obama's decision to shut down the detention center within a year despite the absence of rehabilitation programs for ex-prisoners in some countries, including Yemen. The Pentagon also has said more former ex-detainees appear to be returning to the fight against the U.S. after their release. Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said the reports about al-Shihri should not slow the Obama administration's determination to quickly close the prison. "What it tells me is that President Obama has to proceed extremely carefully. But there is really no justification and there was no justification for disappearing people in a place that was located offshore of America so it was outside the reach of U.S. law," she told CBS's "The Early Show."
But Rep. Pete Hoekstra, of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the executive order Obama signed Thursday to close the facility as "very short on specifics." Interviewed on the same program, he said there are indications that as many as 10 percent of the men released from Guantanamo are "back on the battlefield. They are attacking American troops."
The militant Web statement said al-Shihri's identity was revealed during a recent interview with a Yemeni journalist. That journalist, Abdelela Shayie, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Friday that 35-year-old Saudi man had joined the kingdom's rehabilitation program after his release and got married before leaving for Yemen. Shayie said al-Shihri told him that several other former Guantanamo detainees had also come to Yemen to join al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is an umbrella group of various cells. Its current leader is Yemen's most wanted fugitive Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, who was among 23 al-Qaida figures who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006.
Since the prison break, al-Qaida managed to regroup. It set up training camps, has attracted hundreds of young men and launched dozens of bloody attacks against Westerners, government institutions and oil facilities. Most recently, gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in September, killing 17 people, including six militants. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the Defense Department, al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital. Within days of his release, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo. Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained in urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, according to a summary of the evidence against him from U.S. military review panels at Guantanamo. He also was accused of meeting extremists in Iran and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the documents.
Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets. He said he felt bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family.
Source: abc
The terror group's Yemen branch — known as "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen, which is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home. The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group's second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372. "He managed to leave the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia) and join his brothers in al-Qaida," the statement said.
Documents released by the U.S. Defense Department show that al-Shihri was released from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in November 2007 and transferred to his homeland. The documents confirmed his prisoner number was 372. Saudi Arabian authorities wouldn't immediately comment on the statement. A Yemeni counterterrorism official would only say that Saudi Arabia had asked Yemen to turn over a number of wanted Saudi suspects who fled the kingdom last year for Yemen, and a man with the same name was among those wanted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press and would not provide more details.
Yemen is a U.S. ally in the fight against terror, but it also has been the site of numerous high-profile, al-Qaida-linked attacks including the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors. Yemen's government struggles to maintain order. Many areas of the California-size country are beyond government control and Islamic extremism is strong. Nearly 100 Yemeni detainees remain at Guantanamo, making up the biggest group of prisoners.
Al-Shihri's case highlights the complexity of Obama's decision to shut down the detention center within a year despite the absence of rehabilitation programs for ex-prisoners in some countries, including Yemen. The Pentagon also has said more former ex-detainees appear to be returning to the fight against the U.S. after their release. Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said the reports about al-Shihri should not slow the Obama administration's determination to quickly close the prison. "What it tells me is that President Obama has to proceed extremely carefully. But there is really no justification and there was no justification for disappearing people in a place that was located offshore of America so it was outside the reach of U.S. law," she told CBS's "The Early Show."
But Rep. Pete Hoekstra, of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the executive order Obama signed Thursday to close the facility as "very short on specifics." Interviewed on the same program, he said there are indications that as many as 10 percent of the men released from Guantanamo are "back on the battlefield. They are attacking American troops."
The militant Web statement said al-Shihri's identity was revealed during a recent interview with a Yemeni journalist. That journalist, Abdelela Shayie, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Friday that 35-year-old Saudi man had joined the kingdom's rehabilitation program after his release and got married before leaving for Yemen. Shayie said al-Shihri told him that several other former Guantanamo detainees had also come to Yemen to join al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is an umbrella group of various cells. Its current leader is Yemen's most wanted fugitive Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, who was among 23 al-Qaida figures who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006.
Since the prison break, al-Qaida managed to regroup. It set up training camps, has attracted hundreds of young men and launched dozens of bloody attacks against Westerners, government institutions and oil facilities. Most recently, gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in September, killing 17 people, including six militants. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the Defense Department, al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital. Within days of his release, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo. Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained in urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, according to a summary of the evidence against him from U.S. military review panels at Guantanamo. He also was accused of meeting extremists in Iran and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the documents.
Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets. He said he felt bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family.
Source: abc
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
CIA admit 'waterboarding' al-Qaida suspects
Interrogators used "waterboarding" on three men shortly after the September 11 attacks, the CIA admitted today, naming for the first time the victims of a technique widely perceived as torture.
The men subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, told the US Congress. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."
Hayden told the senate intelligence committee that Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and the other two men were subject to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. "The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said, adding that he opposed limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques permitted in the US Army field manual, which bans waterboarding. Hayden told the committee that fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation programme, with less than one-third subjected to "coercive" techniques. The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a justice department investigation. The tapes were destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations and a prosecutor is investigating whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders in destroying the tapes.
In waterboarding, the victim's mouth is covered and water poured over his face, making the victim feel as if they are drowning. "Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death - you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.
At the same hearing, the US director of national intelligence said the Taliban, which was overthrown in Afghanistan in late 2001, has expanded its operations into once-peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and around the capital, Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year. McConnell also said al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale", allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the US, McConnell said. "Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said, even though the terror network had suffered setbacks in Iraq. He expressed concern that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus elsewhere in the region. "They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," McConnell said, although fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries. McConnell also told the senate panel that US officials believe that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. A report released in London said nearly 400 militant groups now operate around the world and the greatest proliferation has been in the border regions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
The number of violent "non-state" groups has grown about 10% in the past year, according to the 2008 military balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iraq and India, with more than 30 active guerrilla groups each, are the most volatile countries, the report said, with the Afghan-Pakistan border and the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan the worst-affected areas.
Source: Guardian
The men subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, told the US Congress. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."
Hayden told the senate intelligence committee that Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and the other two men were subject to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. "The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said, adding that he opposed limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques permitted in the US Army field manual, which bans waterboarding. Hayden told the committee that fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation programme, with less than one-third subjected to "coercive" techniques. The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a justice department investigation. The tapes were destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations and a prosecutor is investigating whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders in destroying the tapes.
In waterboarding, the victim's mouth is covered and water poured over his face, making the victim feel as if they are drowning. "Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death - you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.
At the same hearing, the US director of national intelligence said the Taliban, which was overthrown in Afghanistan in late 2001, has expanded its operations into once-peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and around the capital, Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year. McConnell also said al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale", allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the US, McConnell said. "Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said, even though the terror network had suffered setbacks in Iraq. He expressed concern that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus elsewhere in the region. "They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," McConnell said, although fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries. McConnell also told the senate panel that US officials believe that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. A report released in London said nearly 400 militant groups now operate around the world and the greatest proliferation has been in the border regions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
The number of violent "non-state" groups has grown about 10% in the past year, according to the 2008 military balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iraq and India, with more than 30 active guerrilla groups each, are the most volatile countries, the report said, with the Afghan-Pakistan border and the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan the worst-affected areas.
Source: Guardian
Monday, October 8, 2001
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE BANKER; Italian Arab Is Perplexed By Swiss Raid
As he left his office here the night before the Swiss and Italian police raided it, Youssef M. Nada, 71, shook his head, saying: ''To come to the end of my life, a good life, and be accused of helping terrorists -- it is too much.''
Mr. Nada and his partner Ghaleb Himmat, who spent five hours talking with a reporter this week in their office and in Mr. Nada's tiled hillside mansion across the lake in Campione d'Italia, Italy, do not fit the image of the shadowy unregulated money shifters portrayed by some American officials.
From a building with copper-colored windows, they run an empire that had a Bahamas bank and shares of business throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with cement plants, drydocks, textile and brick factories and a division that trades steel, wheat, oil and other commodities. The lone sign for the sixth-floor office is a red placard with one word, ''NADA.'' All others ''were taken down because of the reporters,'' said a banker from another floor.
The trading screens and offices look typical.
Before the raid, Mr. Nada denied that he had aided Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group. ''It is not true, and I'm sure the U.S. government must know it is not true,'' he said when asked about the allegation.
Mr. Nada said he believed that he was a victim of guilt by association because he is a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has had members of Osama bin Laden's immensely wealthy family as clients. ''I have been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for 50 years,'' he said. ''That is no secret. But it is not a violent organization.''
The group, founded in Egypt in 1928, was banned in 1948 for opposing [Farouk I of Egypt]. It wants Egypt to become an Islamic state. Today it has members in Parliament, and the United States State Department does not list it as terrorist organization.
Mr. Nada, who left Egypt in 1959 and is an Italian citizen, pointed out that a deputy to Mr. bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a book that attacked the group as infidels because they renounced jihad.
His investment house, Al Taqwa, meaning piety or fear of God, offers 3,000 clients investments in accordance with shariah, or Islamic law. That tenet forbids charging interest or owning anything to do with alcohol, weapons, gambling or adultery.
His chief investment vehicle, Al Taqwa Bank of the Bahamas, which he says he voluntarily liquidated in February, worked like a mutual fund, or mudarabah in Arabic. It made no loans and could not own bonds or, for example, shares in casinos, brewers or weapons manufacturers. But it owned commodities contracts and businesses, many in food and construction materials.
At its height, Mr. Nada said, the bank controlled $220 million in assets, and during its 14-year life investors -- ''mostly Muslims, but also some Christian and Jewish friends'' -- had annual returns of 7 to 14 percent. It closed, he said, because large losses in Indonesia and Malaysia plus news reports that alleged shady dealings started a run by investors. The United States said, however, the Bahamas revoked its charter in April.
An investigation by the Swiss Banking Commission, which included an audit by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, found no evidence of money laundering or allowing other entities to use al-Taqwa as a front, according to the audit.
''What more do you want?'' Mr. Nada asked.
Mark Widmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, said that there were ''signs and rumors about al-Taqwa for years,'' but that Swiss investigators had never found the ''substantial suspicion'' that courts require for a search warrant. He declined to say what new evidence led to the raid today.
Mr. Nada does not appear to lead a shadowy life. He donates to charity, invited a television crew to his house to meet Muslim women who were wearing head scarves and was for years the Middle East expert at the Pio Manzù Research Center, an organization in Rimini, Italy, affiliated with the United Nations.
SOurce: New York Times
Mr. Nada and his partner Ghaleb Himmat, who spent five hours talking with a reporter this week in their office and in Mr. Nada's tiled hillside mansion across the lake in Campione d'Italia, Italy, do not fit the image of the shadowy unregulated money shifters portrayed by some American officials.
From a building with copper-colored windows, they run an empire that had a Bahamas bank and shares of business throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with cement plants, drydocks, textile and brick factories and a division that trades steel, wheat, oil and other commodities. The lone sign for the sixth-floor office is a red placard with one word, ''NADA.'' All others ''were taken down because of the reporters,'' said a banker from another floor.
The trading screens and offices look typical.
Before the raid, Mr. Nada denied that he had aided Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group. ''It is not true, and I'm sure the U.S. government must know it is not true,'' he said when asked about the allegation.
Mr. Nada said he believed that he was a victim of guilt by association because he is a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has had members of Osama bin Laden's immensely wealthy family as clients. ''I have been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for 50 years,'' he said. ''That is no secret. But it is not a violent organization.''
The group, founded in Egypt in 1928, was banned in 1948 for opposing [Farouk I of Egypt]. It wants Egypt to become an Islamic state. Today it has members in Parliament, and the United States State Department does not list it as terrorist organization.
Mr. Nada, who left Egypt in 1959 and is an Italian citizen, pointed out that a deputy to Mr. bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a book that attacked the group as infidels because they renounced jihad.
His investment house, Al Taqwa, meaning piety or fear of God, offers 3,000 clients investments in accordance with shariah, or Islamic law. That tenet forbids charging interest or owning anything to do with alcohol, weapons, gambling or adultery.
His chief investment vehicle, Al Taqwa Bank of the Bahamas, which he says he voluntarily liquidated in February, worked like a mutual fund, or mudarabah in Arabic. It made no loans and could not own bonds or, for example, shares in casinos, brewers or weapons manufacturers. But it owned commodities contracts and businesses, many in food and construction materials.
At its height, Mr. Nada said, the bank controlled $220 million in assets, and during its 14-year life investors -- ''mostly Muslims, but also some Christian and Jewish friends'' -- had annual returns of 7 to 14 percent. It closed, he said, because large losses in Indonesia and Malaysia plus news reports that alleged shady dealings started a run by investors. The United States said, however, the Bahamas revoked its charter in April.
An investigation by the Swiss Banking Commission, which included an audit by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, found no evidence of money laundering or allowing other entities to use al-Taqwa as a front, according to the audit.
''What more do you want?'' Mr. Nada asked.
Mark Widmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, said that there were ''signs and rumors about al-Taqwa for years,'' but that Swiss investigators had never found the ''substantial suspicion'' that courts require for a search warrant. He declined to say what new evidence led to the raid today.
Mr. Nada does not appear to lead a shadowy life. He donates to charity, invited a television crew to his house to meet Muslim women who were wearing head scarves and was for years the Middle East expert at the Pio Manzù Research Center, an organization in Rimini, Italy, affiliated with the United Nations.
SOurce: New York Times
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