posted on February 25, 2006 12:51:49 PM new
The United Arab Emirates' largest city, Dubai, is a banking center thought to attract funds from groups such as al-Qaida.
Here are some of Dubai’s brushes with groups tied to terrorism:
• 2001
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, believed to be Osama bin Laden’s financial manager, received a Dubai bank transfer of $15,000 two days before the Sept. 11 attacks and then left the United Arab Emirates for Pakistan, where he was arrested in 2003.
• 2002
Emirati authorities arrested and turned over to the United States Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. UAE officials said he had planned to attack economic targets in the Emirates and inflict high casualties. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Yemeni court. Al-Nashiri was also suspected of helping direct the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
• 2004
Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a Pakistani suspected of training thousands of al-Qaida fighters, was arrested in the UAE and turned over to officials in his homeland.
A report from the U.S. commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found that 11 Saudi hijackers had traveled to the United States via the airport in Dubai.
The father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, acknowledged heading a clandestine group that, with the help of a Dubai company, supplied Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The head of U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said the UAE was among more than 20 countries with a role in the nuclear black market.
"You got it made, Boo-Boo! Anybody disagrees with YOU & ya just chop off their head! Think ya could give Turd-Blossom some pointers?"
