Al-Qaida suspects in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies took shelter in West Africa in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, converting terror cash into untraceable diamonds, according to findings of a U.N.-backed court obtained by The Associated Press. The allegations came as part of the Sierra Leone war crimes court’s investigation of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, alleged have been a middleman between al-Qaida and West Africa’s multimillion-dollar diamond trade. “We have in the process of investigating Charles Taylor … clearly uncovered that he harbored al-Qaida operatives in Monrovia (the Liberian capital) as late as the summer of 2001,” said David Crane, the court’s lead prosecutor. “The central thread is blood diamonds.” Full Story
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