Individuals who support terrorism play a critical role in financing terror, highly disproportionate to their numbers. Unfortunately, a few wealthy individuals are able to sponsor much terror. For example, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hasnawi, the Saudi national and bin Laden money man, sent the September 11 hijackers operational funds and received at least US$15,000 in unspent funds before leaving the UAE for Pakistan on September 11. According to US officials, Yasin al Qadi, a prominent Jedda businessman and the head of the Muwafaq Foundation, has supported a variety of terrorist groups from al Qaeda to Hamas. According to US court documents, in 1992 al-Qadi provided US$27,000 to US-based Hamas leader Muhammad Salah and lent US$820,000 to a Hamas front organization in Chicago, the Quranic Literacy Institute (QLI). Based on their connection to Hamas, the US government has frozen the assets of both Salah and QLI. Similarly, US officials maintain that the Muwafaq Foundation is a front organization through which wealthy Saudis forward millions of dollars to al Qaeda. In another example, Israeli authorities arrested Osama Zohadi Hamed Karika, a Hamas operative, as he attempted to leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing in December 2001. Karika was found with documents detailing the development of the Qassam rockets, and admitted under questioning that he was on his way to Saudi Arabia to brief unidentified persons on the development of the rockets and to obtain their funding for the project. Before his arrest, Karika had already made one successful trip to Saudi Arabia where he secured initial funding for Hamas’ Qassam rocket program.

Investigation into al Qaeda sleeper cells in Europe in the wake of September 11 revealed the widespread use of legitimate businesses and employment by al Qaeda operatives to derive income to support both themselves and their terrorist activities. According to Congressional testimony by a senior FBI official, a construction and plumbing company run by members of an al Qaeda cell in an unnamed European country hired mujahadin (holy warriors) arriving from places like Bosnia where they had fought what they considered a Jihad (holy war). Cell members ran another business buying, fixing and reselling used cars, and in these and other examples cell members deposited their legitimate salaries, government subsidies, supplemental income from family members, and terrorist funds received by cash or wire transfer into the same one or two accounts.

International and unofficial banking systems have also played a role in terrorist financing. For example, the Treasury Department froze the assets of 62 organizations and individuals associated with the al-Barakat and al-Taqwa financial networks in November 2001. Federal agents raided these groups’ offices across the United States and, subsequently, in Europe and the Bahamas as well. In his remarks at the time, President Bush stated that the two institutions provided fundraising, financial, communications, weapons-procurement, and shipping services for al Qaeda. A few months later, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department Juan C. Zarate testified before Congress that “in 1997, it was reported that the US$60 million collected annually for Hamas was moved to accounts with Bank al Taqwa.” Al-Taqwa shareholders reportedly include known Hamas members and individuals associated with a variety of organizations linked to al Qaeda. A 1996 report by Italian intelligence reportedly further linked al-Taqwa to Palestinian groups, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Egyptian Gama’at al Islamiyah.

Criminal enterprises have also aided in the spread of terrorism, especially as central nodes in the matrix of terrorist financing. Ahmad Omar Sayed al-Sheikh, now on trial for the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Pearl, linked up with Aftab Ansari, a prominent figure in the Indian mafia, to provide al Qaeda with recruits, false documents, safe-houses and proceeds from kidnappings, drug trafficking, prostitution and other crime. Officials in the Balkans are equally concerned about developing links between terrorism and mafia activity in Chechnya and other parts of the Cuacusus spreading to Albania, Bosnia and beyond Southern Europe. Authorities in Belgium have issued an arrest warrant for Victor Bout, a notorious arms trafficker suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and al Qaeda as well as warring factions throughout the African continent in an elaborate guns-for-diamonds scheme.

Humanitarian organizations have played a particularly disturbing role in terrorist financing, and present an especially sensitive challenge as authorities are faced with discerning between legitimate charity organizations, those unknowingly hijacked by terrorists, and others proactively engaged in supporting terrorist groups. The key challenge that arises is in government’s ability and willingness to share information linking such organizations to terrorism in light of the cost of exposing intelligence sources and methods.

Some cases, however, are rather clear-cut. Last October, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, founded by Prince Selman bin Abdul-Aziz and supported by King Fahd. Among the items found at the Saudi charity were before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging US State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. Six Algerians are now incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray for plotting an attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo, including an employee of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and another cell member who was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aid and al Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubayda. Authorities are now trying to track down US$41 million of the commission's missing operating funds. Now that Abu Zubayda has been apprehended, authorities are likely to learn more about the relationships between al Qaeda and this and other humanitarian organizations used as terrorist front organizations.

In December, US authorities raided the Chicago offices of another Saudi-based charity, the Benevolence International Foundation. The foundation's videos and literature glorify martyrdom, and, according to the charity's newsletter, seven of its officers were killed in battle last year in Chechnya and Bosnia. US officials suspect the foundation of financing terrorist activity, and at least one former employee has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.