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Terrorism and the Qatari Connection

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Qatar, one of the richest nations in the world, is facing accusations of funding terrorism in Syria and Iraq.

However, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, has defended his country against allegations of funding terrorism.

“We don’t fund extremists,” the Emir told CNN last week, “If you talk about certain movements, especially in Syria and Iraq, we all consider them terrorist movements.”

Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy – a Qatari citizen who was said to have provided ‘financial support’ to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – was released after just six months in prison.

Sheikh Mohammed was identified as “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” by the 9/11 Commission Report. Since his capture in March 2003 al-Subaiy has provided financial support to Al-Qaida’s senior leadership in South Asia.

He is now accused of funding Islamist terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq.

New documents released by the US Treasury disclosed links between Al-Subaiy and a terror financier accused of bankrolling an al-Qaeda offshoot that plotted to blow up airliners using toothpaste tube bombs.

The American military thwarted the plot in an air strike on the group’s headquarters in Syria just over a week ago.

 

Qatar’s stronghold

Qatar has the world’s third largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves in excess of 25 billion barrels.

The billions in surpluses from the oil and gas industry has been directed by the Qatari government into investments in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific. As of 2013, the holdings were valued at $100 billion in assets.

As of 2014, it has investments around the world in Barclays Bank, Harrods, Heathrow Airport, Volkswagen, Valentino, Siemens, Printemps, The Shard, Paris Saint-Germain FC, Royal Dutch Shell, Bank of America, Tiffany, BlackBerry, Agricultural Bank of China, Sainsbury’s, and Santander Brasil.

Qatar’s influence is worldwide and it has asserted itself globally through expanding its media group, Al Jazeera Media Network.

Since 2011, Qatar has actively supported Syrian opposition groups by providing them with weapons. There is evidence that these groups supported by Qatar include the hard-line Islamic militant groups active in northern Syria.

Prominent critics are now calling for greater scrutiny of Qatar’s connections to global terrorism with the threat of sanctions if it fails to tackle the problem.

According to a media report a US security think tank will publish a report understood to have identified 20 Qataris as senior terrorist financiers and facilitators. Ten of those Qataris are already designated as terrorists on official US and UN blacklists.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed currently being held in Guantanamo Bay lived freely in Qatar for a number of years in the 1990s despite being wanted even at that stage by the US for terror offences.

 

The Al-Subaiy connection

Subaiy was a Qatari Central Bank employee, who was blacklisted as a terrorist fundraiser as long ago as 2008.

The 49-year-old was identified as “a Qatar-based terrorist financier and facilitator who has provided financial support to, and acted on behalf of, al-Qaeda senior leadership, including senior al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) prior to KSM’s capture in March 2003” according to the official US report of 2008.

The US authorities claim al-Subaiy provided “financial support to al-Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan’s tribal region, and has also worked with senior al-Qaeda facilitators to move extremist recruits to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. In addition, al-Subaiy has served as a diplomatic and communications conduit between al-Qaeda and third parties in the Middle East”.

Al-Subaiy was finally convicted in his absence in 2008 by a court in Bahrain “of financing terrorism, undergoing terrorism training and facilitating the travel others abroad to receive terrorist training, and for membership in a terrorist organization”. Two months later in March 2008, he was arrested in Qatar and jailed for those offences.

One diplomatic cable sent in May 2008 hinted at a dispute between the Qatari intelligence agencies and the country’s then all-powerful Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al Thani over the handling of the al-Subaiy case.

In the cable sent by the US’s then charge d’affaires Michael Ratney, ahead of a visit by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he wrote: “HBJ was involved very early on, but to the consternation, we believe, of Qatar’s security agencies. If you raise the issue on this visit, it should be limited to thanking the Qataris for their cooperation on the case… We believe any more detailed discussion of the case should be done through the Qatari Attorney General and intelligence service, and not with HBJ.”

Al-Subaiy was released after six months in September 2009 and immediately added to a UNs’ list of individuals subject to targeted sanctions because of their terrorist links.

The latest documents released by the US Treasury disclose that al-Subaiy has continued to fund terrorist activities.

Ashraf Muhammad Yusuf Uthman Abd al-Salam, who has been fighting in Syria since the beginning of the year, is alleged to have helped al-Subaiy to transfer of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” intended for al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Abd al-Salam is described by the Americans as a financial backer of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the al-Nusra Front, which is an al-Qaeda affiliated jihadi group operating in Syria.

The terror network extends to another Qatari national, also added to the blacklist last month by US government. Ibrahim Isa Hajji Muhammad al-Bakr had previously been jailed in Qatar in the early 2000s for funding terrorism but, according to the US, “was subsequently released from prison after he promised not to conduct terrorist activity in Qatar”.

The US claims he has since gone on to become a major fundraiser for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban and serves as a link between “Gulf-based al-Qaeda financiers and Afghanistan”.

The latest documents also disclosed that an unidentified financier, based in Qatar, had sent £1.25 million to Tariq al-Harzi, who is accused of being in charge of ISIS operation in helping foreign jihadis, including many Britons, to cross the border from Turkey into Syria.

Another senior Qatari – Abd al-Rahman bin Umayr al-Nuaymi – was designated as a terrorist in December last year by the US government. He is accused by the US of transferring £1.25 million a month to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Dr David Weinberg, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who recently testified on Qatari terror finance before the US Congress, said he was preparing a report which would name 20 Qataris with links to terror financing.

“The scope of Qatar-based terrorist fundraising is astonishing,” said Dr Weinberg, “According to current US officials, tiny Qatar has displaced its much bigger neighbour Saudi Arabia as the number one source of private donations to Isil and other violent extremists in Syria and Iraq.”

Dr Weinberg added: “Qatar has a long history of turning a blind eye to backers of al-Qaeda in its midst. Now the Qataris are repeating history all over again, refusing to arrest blacklisted terror financiers right under their noses. The known al-Qaeda funders whom they let out of jail have gone on to become some of terrorism’s top moneymen, boosting Isil, Khorasan, and other al-Qaeda linked groups.”

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