A prominent Yemeni cleric apprehended in Germany on charges of financing terrorism used a Brooklyn mosque to help funnel millions of dollars to Al Qaeda and boasted that he had personally delivered $20 million to Osama bin Laden, federal officials said today. The cleric, Sheik Muhammad Ali Hassan al-Mouyad, told an F.B.I. informant that he was a spiritual adviser to Mr. bin Laden and had worked for years to provide money and weapons for a terrorist “jihad,” according to two affidavits that were unsealed today in Brooklyn and that charge him and a Yemeni assistant with financing terrorism. Sheik Mouyad “boasted jihad was his field and trumpeted his involvement in providing money, recruits and supplies to Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups and said he received money for jihad from collections at the Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said. In New York, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Qaeda operatives “did their fund-raising right here in our own backyard in Brooklyn.” The name of the mosque is spelled “Al Farouq” in the court papers. Full Story
About OODA Analyst
OODA is comprised of a unique team of international experts capable of providing advanced intelligence and analysis, strategy and planning support, risk and threat management, training, decision support, crisis response, and security services to global corporations and governments.