The International Analyst Network is an interesting blog community dedicated to intelligence matters. A post by Mark Silverberg, excerpt below, discusses the importance of criminal activity to terror financing. Silverberg quotes Security Debrief contributor and former DEA Chief Asa Hutchinson on the connection between drug money and terrorist operations.

Blood Trade

Investigators searching the homes of the suicide bombers in the Casablanca attacks of May 2003 discovered documents inspired by the sermons of radical Islamist ideologue Abu Qatada. These sermons, among other things, justified criminal fundraising activity provided that the money was used to finance jihad. This has provided Hezbollah with the necessary religious justification for establishing a global web of criminal enterprises in support of terrorism.

 

It is Hezbollah’s illicit enterprises in America that have drawn the attention of our security and intelligence agencies. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into a pseudo-ephedrine smuggling scam in the American Midwest led investigators to Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries including bank accounts tied to Hezbollah and Hamas. ¹¹ DEA chief Asa Hutchinson confirmed: “a significant portion of some of the sales are sent to the Middle East to benefit terrorist organizations.” A senior U.S. law enforcement official added, “There is a significant amount of money moved out of the United States attributed to fraud that goes to terrorism” and American supporters of Hezbollah are the source. In March 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, a Lebanese citizen living in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to raise money for Hezbollah. Kourani admitted hosting meetings at his home where donations for Hezbollah were solicited by a guest speaker from Lebanon. According to the indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Michigan in January 2004, Kourani was a “member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah.”