Flight Safety
17th Sep 2001, 10:05
I hope it's Ok to post this in this forum. I also apologize for the long post, but it's interesting reading.
The following article is from the Sept 16th Sunday Times(UK).
London bank used for Bin Laden cash
David Leppard and Michael Sheridan, Peshawar
THE terrorist mastermind blamed by America for carrying out last week's suicide attacks in America is thought by the FBI to have partly financed his propaganda activities through an account at Barclays bank in Notting Hill, west London.
(Photo of Bin Laden, caption) Bin Laden uses an annual income of about $50m to fund his organisation
Photograph: Rex
Bank documents obtained by The Sunday Times show how tens of thousands of pounds were channelled through a Barclays account controlled by the man suspected of leading Osama Bin Laden's operations in Britain.
Bin Laden personally appointed Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi dissident with a family home in north London, to run an organisation ostensibly devoted to war relief work.
But investigators believe the group was a front that allowed Bin Laden to finance and publish fatwas calling for the death of American civilians.
The fatwa - which is a religious instruction or obligation - provided terrorists with the spurious religious justification for last week's suicide attacks that left an estimated 5,000 people dead.
Court documents link Fawwaz to the fatwa and say the original death sentence document was faxed directly to him from Bin Laden in Sudan. They also suggest he may have been directly involved with the terrorist cell that carried out the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, which killed nearly 220 people.
Barclays documents show that Fawwaz was the signatory on the account for the Advice and Reformation Committee, the organisation that British and American officials believe is a Bin Laden front for his terrorist network.
Credit card statements for his Barclaycard show Fawwaz used the account to pay hundreds of pounds for stationery bought from a Huddersfield company apparently to print thousands of copies of one of Bin Laden's fatwas.
Copies of Fawwaz's mobile telephone records show he was in frequent touch with Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all countries where Bin Laden has growing numbers of supporters.There was also a series of calls to New York and Washington, suggesting that he had links there.
A spokesman for Barclays said the bank was unable to discuss individual accounts: "There is very little we can say. We are fully aware of our legal obligations under various acts such as the money-laundering act and the anti-terrorist act and we are obliged to report any suspicious activities and transactions."
Fawwaz is now in a British prison awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to America on charges of conspiring with Bin Laden and others to murder American citizens.
The Barclays account is thought to have formed part of a network of bank accounts and front companies used by Bin Laden to finance or otherwise promote his terror network.
The trail of Bin Laden's "blood money" flows from Sudan and countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Dubai in the Gulf and helps to sustain Islamic fundamentalist groups in cities including Geneva, London and Chicago.
Bin Laden also used the money to build up the Al-Qaeda organisation and a network of Islamic centres and charities that operated throughout the world. As the organisations proliferated, they became increasingly difficult for western intelligence agencies to disentangle and penetrate.
In a 1996 interview, Bin Laden said: "To put it simply, the Bin Laden establishment's aid covers 13 countries, including Albania, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Britain, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and some Gulf countries . . ."
In the Balkans alone, the Islamic centres were thought to be supporting between 4,000 and 6,000 fighters, mostly Arabs.
Bin Laden has used much of his estimated $50m income each year - which comes from his huge personal fortune inherited from his wealthy family - to buy land for training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan.
(Photo of Bank, caption) The trail of Bin Laden leads through Notting Hill, London
In Sudan, he set up two investment companies, Ladin International and Taba Investments, which helped to control and channel much of his fortune, estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds.
A holding company, a construction firm and the Qudurat Transport Company were all set up to provide income to support the increasingly sophisticated enterprise and to provide cover for the procurement of explosives, weapons and chemicals - and for the travel of the group's operatives.
At one point he even bought a travel agency in Peshawar, Pakistan, to organise the travel arrangements for his supporters and a fleet of fishing boats to move his followers around. When he left Sudan for Afghanistan, he and his family and supporters flew in a C-130 transport aircraft that they owned.
His organisations are run along the lines of a multinational corporation, split into several committees, all reporting back to a central council.
These include a military committee that conducts training and buys weapons; a money and business committee that runs all the companies; a fatwa and Islamic study committee; and a media committee that publishes a weekly newspaper about Islam and the holy war.
Bin Laden is also thought to have taken control of at least part of the finances of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which the West believes has been sheltering him.
The British bank accounts of the Taliban have been frozen as a result of sanctions imposed in 1999. These followed its refusal to hand over Bin Laden after the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. One source said that two such accounts were at the National Westminster Bank (now the Royal Bank of Scotland) in London.
Bin Laden has virtually taken over the Taliban militia to make himself the dominant figure in Afghanistan, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the movement. In recent months, Bin Laden is said to have supplanted the Taliban's official leader, Muhammad Omar.
Additional reporting: Nick Fielding and Gareth Walsh
Here is one of the "fatwa", or religous instructions from God that his organization published back in 1998. It's very chilling.
Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders
World Islamic Front Statement
23 February 1998
Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh
Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.
The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.
No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed . Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."
On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
[b]The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it [EMPHASIS ADDED], in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."
This is in addition to the words of Almighty God: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"
We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Almighty God said: "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."
Almighty God also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all things."
Almighty God also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."
[ 17 September 2001: Message edited by: Flight Safety ]
The following article is from the Sept 16th Sunday Times(UK).
London bank used for Bin Laden cash
David Leppard and Michael Sheridan, Peshawar
THE terrorist mastermind blamed by America for carrying out last week's suicide attacks in America is thought by the FBI to have partly financed his propaganda activities through an account at Barclays bank in Notting Hill, west London.
(Photo of Bin Laden, caption) Bin Laden uses an annual income of about $50m to fund his organisation
Photograph: Rex
Bank documents obtained by The Sunday Times show how tens of thousands of pounds were channelled through a Barclays account controlled by the man suspected of leading Osama Bin Laden's operations in Britain.
Bin Laden personally appointed Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi dissident with a family home in north London, to run an organisation ostensibly devoted to war relief work.
But investigators believe the group was a front that allowed Bin Laden to finance and publish fatwas calling for the death of American civilians.
The fatwa - which is a religious instruction or obligation - provided terrorists with the spurious religious justification for last week's suicide attacks that left an estimated 5,000 people dead.
Court documents link Fawwaz to the fatwa and say the original death sentence document was faxed directly to him from Bin Laden in Sudan. They also suggest he may have been directly involved with the terrorist cell that carried out the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, which killed nearly 220 people.
Barclays documents show that Fawwaz was the signatory on the account for the Advice and Reformation Committee, the organisation that British and American officials believe is a Bin Laden front for his terrorist network.
Credit card statements for his Barclaycard show Fawwaz used the account to pay hundreds of pounds for stationery bought from a Huddersfield company apparently to print thousands of copies of one of Bin Laden's fatwas.
Copies of Fawwaz's mobile telephone records show he was in frequent touch with Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all countries where Bin Laden has growing numbers of supporters.There was also a series of calls to New York and Washington, suggesting that he had links there.
A spokesman for Barclays said the bank was unable to discuss individual accounts: "There is very little we can say. We are fully aware of our legal obligations under various acts such as the money-laundering act and the anti-terrorist act and we are obliged to report any suspicious activities and transactions."
Fawwaz is now in a British prison awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to America on charges of conspiring with Bin Laden and others to murder American citizens.
The Barclays account is thought to have formed part of a network of bank accounts and front companies used by Bin Laden to finance or otherwise promote his terror network.
The trail of Bin Laden's "blood money" flows from Sudan and countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Dubai in the Gulf and helps to sustain Islamic fundamentalist groups in cities including Geneva, London and Chicago.
Bin Laden also used the money to build up the Al-Qaeda organisation and a network of Islamic centres and charities that operated throughout the world. As the organisations proliferated, they became increasingly difficult for western intelligence agencies to disentangle and penetrate.
In a 1996 interview, Bin Laden said: "To put it simply, the Bin Laden establishment's aid covers 13 countries, including Albania, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Britain, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and some Gulf countries . . ."
In the Balkans alone, the Islamic centres were thought to be supporting between 4,000 and 6,000 fighters, mostly Arabs.
Bin Laden has used much of his estimated $50m income each year - which comes from his huge personal fortune inherited from his wealthy family - to buy land for training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan.
(Photo of Bank, caption) The trail of Bin Laden leads through Notting Hill, London
In Sudan, he set up two investment companies, Ladin International and Taba Investments, which helped to control and channel much of his fortune, estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds.
A holding company, a construction firm and the Qudurat Transport Company were all set up to provide income to support the increasingly sophisticated enterprise and to provide cover for the procurement of explosives, weapons and chemicals - and for the travel of the group's operatives.
At one point he even bought a travel agency in Peshawar, Pakistan, to organise the travel arrangements for his supporters and a fleet of fishing boats to move his followers around. When he left Sudan for Afghanistan, he and his family and supporters flew in a C-130 transport aircraft that they owned.
His organisations are run along the lines of a multinational corporation, split into several committees, all reporting back to a central council.
These include a military committee that conducts training and buys weapons; a money and business committee that runs all the companies; a fatwa and Islamic study committee; and a media committee that publishes a weekly newspaper about Islam and the holy war.
Bin Laden is also thought to have taken control of at least part of the finances of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which the West believes has been sheltering him.
The British bank accounts of the Taliban have been frozen as a result of sanctions imposed in 1999. These followed its refusal to hand over Bin Laden after the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. One source said that two such accounts were at the National Westminster Bank (now the Royal Bank of Scotland) in London.
Bin Laden has virtually taken over the Taliban militia to make himself the dominant figure in Afghanistan, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the movement. In recent months, Bin Laden is said to have supplanted the Taliban's official leader, Muhammad Omar.
Additional reporting: Nick Fielding and Gareth Walsh
Here is one of the "fatwa", or religous instructions from God that his organization published back in 1998. It's very chilling.
Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders
World Islamic Front Statement
23 February 1998
Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh
Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.
The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.
No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed . Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."
On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
[b]The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it [EMPHASIS ADDED], in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."
This is in addition to the words of Almighty God: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"
We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Almighty God said: "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."
Almighty God also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all things."
Almighty God also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."
[ 17 September 2001: Message edited by: Flight Safety ]