Al Qaeda Financing: Not Dead Yet

Hard on the heels of an arrest for Al Qaeda financing in New York comes a plea deal from a Kansas City man, Khalid Ouazzani, a Moroccan national and a naturalized American citizen, who defrauded Bank of America and other sources for hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least $23,000 of which was provided directly to Al Qaeda. Once again, this illustrates the fact that Al Qaeda proper might be down, but it is certainly not out.

These last two cases represent around $75,000 in financing provided to Al Qaeda-branded operations by American citizens. We can safely assume they are the tip of the iceberg. And if Americans are raising potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars for Al Qaeda operations, what is happening in the rest of the world? Al Qaeda proper may be reduced to a shadow of its former self in many respects, but it casts that shadow long and even a lowball estimate of its finances still represents more than enough money to carry out serious terrorist attacks.

Labels: Al-Qaeda, American-Al-Qaeda, American-Terrorists, Khalid-Ouazzani, Terrorist-Financing, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink