GlobalmbWatch: US media has announced the appointment of Zaki Barzinji, age 27, as the new liaison to the Muslim American community under the White House Office of Public Engagement. According to a Huffington Post report:
May 26, 2016 With Islamophobia rampant in communities across the US, Muslim Americans now have a chief ally at the White House.
Zaki Barzinji, former Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.), recently assumed the new role as liaison to the Muslim American community under the Office of Public Engagement, the White House director of specialty media told The Huffington Post this week. In his new post, Barzinji will plan outreach to Muslim Americans, as well as Sikhs, Buddhists, and Hindus, working to ensure that these communities are represented at the federal level.
‘A big part of this role is making sure the national conversation about these communities is not framed through a single lens, but covers the full range of issues that Muslims and other Americans face,’ Barzinji, 27, said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
Zaki Barzinji, 27, recently began as liaison to the Muslim American community under the White House Office of Public Engagement. The Virginia native and former president of Muslim Youth of North America has experience bringing underrepresented groups into the public arena. While working in the governor’s office, Barzinji served as a liaison to the Virginia Asian Advisory Board and prior to that directed outreach to Arab American and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign.”
Read the rest here.
It would appear that in reality, it is not “Muslim Americans” who now have a chief ally at the White House but rather the US Muslim Brotherhood. Among other things, Zaki Barzinji is the grandson of the late Jamal Barzinji, of one of the most important founders of the US Brotherhood. As we noted in October 2015 in our obituary for Jamal Barzinji, according to a history of the US Muslim Brotherhood (USMB), authored by the GMBDW editor:
Three individuals—Ahmad al-Haj Totonji, Dr. Jamal al-Din Barzinji, and Dr. Hisham Yahya al-Talib—played key roles in the founding and development of MSA [Muslim Student Association]. All were born in the Kurdish, northern part of Iraq, and may have met there or possibly later in Britain, where all three received their undergraduate education in engineering An FBI memo has identified Barzinji and al-Talib as members of the Muslim Brotherhood prior to establishing a residence in the US. The Washington Post adds that [Barzinji] fled Iraq in 1969 when the Ba’athist regime started executing fellow Islamists. After completion of their studies in Britain, the three came to the United States, ostensibly for graduate study but also to continue organizing Muslim youth activities
As the above report goes on to explain, Dr. Barzinji went on to play key roles in the founding of the Saudi World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), said by US government agencies and officials to have helped spread Islamic extremism and terrorism around the world, as well as most of the important organizations comprising the US Muslim Brotherhood including the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and perhaps most famously the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). In January 2014, the GMBDW reported that elements of the US Muslim Brotherhood had organized a dinner in honor of Dr. Barzinji and the IIIT. In May of this year, we reported that the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) awarded the organization’s “Muslim Democrat of the Year” award posthumously to the late Jamal Barzinji as well as to his colleague, the late Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, another founding figure of the US Muslim Brotherhood and both co-founders of CSID. CSID itself was founded in 1998 in what appears to have been a cooperative effort among the US Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department and Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito with the aim of promoting “Islamic Democracy.”
Zaki Barzinji himself has participated actively with US Muslim Brotherhood organizations including as noted above the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) associated with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and, as the GMBDW reported in 2008, appearing as a MYNA representative alongside important leaders of the US Muslim Brotherhood. Zaki Barzinji joins a long list of individuals tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood who have been invited by the Obama Administration to serve as important advisors including:
- Mazen Asbahi- On August 1 2008, the GMBDW (then known as the GMBDR) ran a post identifying Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi as an adviser to the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and NAIT as part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist trial, as was NAIT board member Jamal Said. The post also listed Mr. Asbahi’s connection to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The GMBDW ran a second post on the same day that identified Asbahi’s ties to two further US Muslim Brotherhood organizations- the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and an Illinois LLC called SA Consulting. At this time the GMBDR was private and the post received very little attention until August 6th when the Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that Mr. Asbahi had resigned from the Obama campaign after the Journal had queried him about his USMB ties. The Journal credited the GMBDR for breaking the story.
- Dahlia Mogahed- On April 12 2009, the GMBDW reported that one of the two Muslim members appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was Dahlia Mogahed, a protege of John Espositio, perhaps the best known academic supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and with strong ties to Saudi Arabia. Although the report on the appointment was not exclusive to the GMBDW, we were the only publication to note that Ms. Mogahed is the daughter of Elsayed Mogahed, an Egyptian immigrant who is a former engineering scientist at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Islamic Center of Madison (ICM). The website of the ICM links mainly to US Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Souheil Ghannouchi, the President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), was ICM Imam and President for several years. The MAS is part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and closest to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
- Huma Abedin– On February 7 2010, the GMBDW reported that that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had addressed students at the Dar El-Hekma women’s college in Saudi Arabia, known to have been co-founded and patronized by an individual designated as a terrorist by the US as well as by important Saudi bankers and members of the Bin Laden family. As part of that story, we noted that the Vice Dean of institutional advancement at Dar El-Hekma is Saleha M. Abedin who was one of the founders of the College, as well being the mother of Huma Abedin, a Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton. We also reported that Saleha Abedin, along with her late husband Syed Z. Abedin, were founders of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a London organization that is known to have been close to the Saudi Muslim World League. We subsequently reported that Saleha Abedin was serving as a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR), an umbrella group for 86 Islamic organizations, many of which are associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fundraising, or support for Al Qaeda. We also delved into the ties of Huma Abedin’s brother Hasan Abedin who was an officer of the Oxford Center of Islamic Studies, chaired by Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Saudi with his own extensive ties to Islamist organizations. A variety of other actors later claimed credit for unearthing the information about Human Abedin’s parents that was first reported by the GMBDW.
- Rashad Hussain- On February 14 2010, the GMBDW reported on the US Muslim Brotherhood connections of Rashad Hussain, a White House attorney who was President Obama’s newly appointed envoy to the OIC. Those connections including ties to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS). The post also revealed that an annual MSA conference, Mr. Hussein appeared along side the daughter of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian and labeled Al-Arian’s prosecution “politically motivated persecution.” The post further noted that the sentences pertaining to Mr. Hussein statement had been removed from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) report on the MSA conference but were still available at the Internet Archive. The story was subsequently “appropriated” by another media outlet who only belatedly and partially credited the GMBDW as the original source of the story.
- Mohamed Elibiary– On October 30 2010, the GMBDW reported that the Department of Homeland Security had sworn in three new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council one of whom was Mohamed Elibiary, who we exclusively identified as the President and CEO of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, an organization with ties to the US Muslim Brotherhood and the US Hamas infrastructure. Since that time, Mr. Elibiary has been widely discussed in a variety of venues and described as a “noted Islamist” though he was virtually unknown until the GMBDW highlighted his background.
Despite the above, the GMBDW is on record as rejecting the suggestion, widely popular in certain circles, that the presence in the Obama Administration of so many individuals tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood is proof that the government has been “infiltrated” by the Brotherhood. As we have argued in the past:More recently, an additional challenge has emerged, namely the use of GMBDW research to spin unsubstantiated and fanciful stories about the same networks we have so carefully tried to document. The most egregious example is the claim, since gone viral, that the Muslim Brotherhood has “infiltrated” the Obama administration. Stories based on this alleged infiltration typically feature rogues galleries of “Muslim Brotherhood operatives” said to be whispering in the ear of the Obama administration and aimed at causing the downfall of the United States. In most cases, the stories include high-profile individuals first identified by the GMBDW as tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood using criteria we have long since publicly explained.
We refer readers to that post where we debunk the notion of such “infiltration” and provide an alternative explanation for the presence of these individuals in the US government but it is important to repeat our caution at the end that:
….there remains the pertinent issue of what influence, malign or otherwise, these individuals may have had on Obama Administration policy toward the Middle East or in other relevant policy arenas
That said, the newly announced appointment of Zaki Barzinji is particularly interesting to us as we believe it is evidence of a long-standing cooperation between the US Government and the Muslim Brotherhood. This topic however is far beyond the scope of this post and will hopefully be the subject of a future report.
Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security
Militant Islam, Obama Admin Forbidden Terms
A distinction needs to be made. Radical extremists are for the force multipliers, those like Anwar al Awlaki. The militants like Mohammed Emwazi are born from the radicals and they are the deadly enforcers of the Islamic doctrine and Sharia.
Don’t blame the FBI for failures, with particular regard to the worst terror attack in American by a gunman, Orlando. Blame the White House. All the Q&A sessions, congressional testimony and press briefings by FBI Director James Comey have had an underlying message, a cry for help, attention and support.
Don’t blame the intelligence community including CENTCOM and the Pentagon for battlefield or rules of engagement failures. That belongs to the entire White House national security team. The Office of National Intelligence has also been affected.
This is not political correctness at all, it is a Barak Obama edict, sensitivity to Islam across our homeland and across the globe. Obama has had a strident mission since he assumed the Oval Office to create a Muslim protective shield. This is beyond dispute.
While not in any chronological order, there are some very key decisions that were made and continue to be made by the Obama administration that affect our national security and this generational war titled the Overseas Contingency Operation.
In April of 2009, Barak Obama delivered ‘The New Beginnings’ speech. In this presentation he spelled out his full agenda in what was to become the long-term mission to elevate Muslims and their organizations at home and globally. The White House objectives have been successful and consequential.
With the new beginning announced, Obama extended his same purpose throughout government agencies, law enforcement and policies as a mandatory doctrine.
‘Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.” Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.’ Philip Haney, The Hill.
Directly after the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration did reach out to the Muslim communities to determine who was with peace and national security and who perhaps gave clues of a larger and hidden condition that could be festering that would prove clues to more domestic security challenges.
Then came the Holyland Foundation trial in 2007/2008. The material facts and conditions of the domestic threat, people, money, collaboration and global consequence all converged in a courtroom in Texas.
During the Holy Land trial, FBI Agent Lara Burns testified in court that CAIR was a front for HAMAS. One trial exhibit submitted by federal prosecutors – and stipulated to by the defense in the case – explained that these organizations were dedicated to a “civilizational-jihadist process” to destroy America from within and replace the Constitution with sharia (Islamic law):
The Ikhwah [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions. (p. 21)
Federal prosecutors specifically cited this internal Muslim Brotherhood planning document as the strategic goal of these U.S.-based Islamic groups – the very same group advising the Obama Administration. The federal judge in the Holy Foundation case agreed with the case presented by the federal prosecutors had made regarding these organizations, stating in one ruling that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations with CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF…and with HAMAS.” (p. 14-15) More important details here from the CounterjihadReport.
The Department of Justice under Eric Holder was included in the full protection of the terror networks and associated people. Congressman Gohmert of Texas challenged AG Holder to no avail in a chilling exchange.
Here is where the ‘words matter’ material documentation began. The Obama administration took this agenda to new standard.
In 2009, DHS published via the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment a ‘Rightwing Extremism’ document, pinpointing those that may challenge the Obama Muslim doctrine. Additionally, DHS posted The Department of Homeland Security launched a ‘Do’s and Dont’s bulletin.
The entire complexion of the Department of Homeland Security began to change with new personnel and outreach under Secretary Janet Napolitano. The outreach extended to law enforcement agencies of which LAPD demonstrates.
The order to purge documents, training materials and database was made. The proof is here.
Barak Obama was not finished. In 2015, the White House introduced a strategy for CVE, Counter Violent Extremism.
Then comes the foreign policy of Obama. All deference to Iran began before Obama assumed the White House in 2009 and continues today. Secret back channels to Iran using Ambassador Burns began in 2008. Further, there is Iraq and Syria with Islamic State. Documents here on ISIS prove the intelligence and forecasts were known, available and delivered.
This would not be complete without mentioning China, Russia or North Korea where policies are non-existent.
The Paris attack was a slaughter and Obama found it wise to snub the solidarity march with other world leaders.
Obama touted Yemen as one of his successes but the country collapsed. Finally, the Obama policy doctrine crumbled and the cause was fully explained here. Obama wilfully recoiled as he and Hillary did on Benghazi.
It really no longer matters that Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry refuse to use key terms to describe militant Islam, the entire well verse and informed world have defined it for them. What does matter beyond the words are the policies and refusals of missions, strategies and conditions to keep America, her interests and allies safe.
It is no wonder there is no global respect for the Obama administration and there is much less to fear from her.
In summary, Obama owns this terror, owns this jihad and owns the death as well as the genocide. This is his legacy, he owns it as his own scarlet letter.
FBI on Orlando Attack, Comprehensive Details
House members will receive a classified briefing on Tuesday afternoon on the Orlando shooting from FBI Director James Comey, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johson, and National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen, Speaker Paul Ryan’s office has announced.
Police and SWAT finally got into the club and said if you are alive, raise your hand….let that sink in.
Director Provides Update on Orlando Shootings Investigation
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| FBI Director James Comey—joined by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates—addresses members of the media during a press briefing held June 13, 2016 at FBI Headquarters regarding the recent mass shooting at nightclub in Orlando, Florida. |
FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the FBI is working non-stop to understand what led a man to commit a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida that left 49 people dead and dozens more injured.
In a televised news briefing at FBI Headquarters, Comey said FBI investigators—working closely with state and local law enforcement agencies—are trying to understand “every moment of the killer’s path” leading up to the shooting early Sunday morning at a popular nightclub.
Comey said the shooter, who was killed in a gunfight with police responders, made three 911 phone calls from the club during the attack, beginning at about 2:30 a.m. In the calls, he claimed allegiance to the leader of the so-called Islamic State (ISIL) as well as the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon attack and a Florida man who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for a terrorist group in conflict with ISIL.
“There are strong indications of radicalization by this killer and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorism organizations,” Comey said, adding that the FBI is the lead investigative agency on this case because it is a terrorism investigation.
Director Comey also described the FBI’s prior contacts with the killer, beginning in May 2013. The FBI opened an investigation when the shooter, then working as a contract security guard, made some inflammatory comments to co-workers and claimed a family connection to Al Qaeda. The shooter was interviewed twice during the preliminary investigation, where he admitted making the statements but said he had done so in anger at his co-workers, who he believed were discriminating against him. The case was closed after 10 months.
Two months later, the shooter’s name surfaced as a casual acquaintance of the Florida man who blew himself up in Syria for the terrorist group al Nusra Front. “Our investigation turned up no ties of any consequence between the two of them,” Comey said. “We will continue to look forward in this investigation, and backward. We will leave no stone unturned.”
Comey said the Bureau is reviewing those cases to see if anything was missed. “We’re also going to look hard at our own work to see whether there is something we should have done differently. So far, the honest answer is: I don’t think so. I don’t see anything in reviewing our own work that our agents should have done differently.”
The Director, who was joined at the press briefing by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, expressed sorrow for the victims and their families.
“Our hearts are broken and ache for the people who are lost in Orlando, those wounded, and their families,” he said.
Comey also thanked first responders for their heroic work. “They showed professionalism and extraordinary bravery that saved lives,” he said. “We are very lucky that such good people choose lives of service in law enforcement.”
Death is the Sentence, Orlando Mosque, Seminary, Gangs
Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues
Reuters: The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, hosted a political show on an U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel that took a hard anti-Pakistan line.
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In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son’s rampage had “nothing to do with religion.”
He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and he became very angry.
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” NBC News quoted him as saying. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”
Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when came to the United States. He did not immediately return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email.
Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called “Durand Jirga,” which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent’s former British rulers.
“Three or four times a year, he would show up in Southern California,” Khatab said in a phone interview on Sunday. “He’d talk for about two to three hours. He’d buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day.”
Khatab said Seddique Mateen’s political views were largely anti-Pakistan.
One of Seddique Mateen’s videos refers to the “killer ISI” – the acronym for Pakistan’s main military-run intelligence service – and says the agency is the “creator and father of the world’s terrorism.”
U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations.
A U.S. congressman said Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and U.S. citizen, may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between the gunman and any such group.
Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.
Seddique Mateen interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January 2014, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast.
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The connections are deeper, they include an American suicide bomber that the Orlando shooter Omar met with face to face. Then there is al Nusra and the Khorasan Group. The suicide bomber was Abusalha and his father is a Palestinian. Read the whole story here.
Omar Mateen had been investigated by the FBI twice before, in 2013 and then in 2014. The first investigation took place in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers that indicated sympathy for terrorists. He was investigated and interviewed twice but the FBI was “unable to verify the substance of his comments,” FBI Assistant Special Agent In charge Ronald Hopper said.
Then in 2014, Hopper said,Mateen was investigated and interviewed again, this time for suspected connections to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen who became a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. Hooper said Mateen’s contact with Abu-Sallah was minimal and it was deemed that “he did not constitute a substantive threat at that time.
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FNC: The gunman who murdered at least 50 people in a Florida nightclub early Sunday morning was a follower of a controversial gang leader-turned-bank robber who was released from prison last year despite warnings from prosecutors that he would recruit people to carry out violent acts, sources told FoxNews.com.
Omar Mateen, whose bloody siege inside a packed Orlando gay nightclub ended when SWAT teams stormed the building and killed him, was a radical Muslim who followed Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a law enforcement source said.
Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a former U.S. Marine known to his supporters at his Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary as “Abu Taubah.”
“It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando,” said a law enforcement source familiar with Robertson’s history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence. “Mateen was enrolled in [Robertson’s online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.”
Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, according to law enforcement sources, a development his attorney refused to confirm or deny.
“No comment,” Corey Cohen said in an email reply when asked if his longtime client was in custody. Police also did not confirm or deny picking up Robertson.
This undated image provided by the Orlando Police Department shows Omar Mateen, the shooting suspect at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. (Orlando Police Department via AP) (The Associated Press)
FoxNews.com has reported extensively on Robertson, a former U.S. Marine who served as a bodyguard to the Blind Sheik involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack and led a gang of New York bank robbers called “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves” before resurfacing in Orlando, where he started an Islamic seminary.
The school, recently renamed the Timbuktu Seminary, is operated by Robertson, a 47-year-old firebrand known to his thousands of followers as Abu Taubah.
Robertson, who recently spent four years in prison in Florida on illegal weapons and tax fraud charges before being released by a Florida judge one year ago, has openly and enthusiastically preached against homosexuality. The targets of Mateen’s bloody rampage were members of the gay community of Orlando, an hour’s drive from the 29-year-old’s home in Fort Pierce.
Prosecutors said wiretaps from 2011 proved Robertson instructed one of his students, Jonathan Paul Jimenez, to file false tax returns to obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania for terror training.
Jimenez studied with Robertson for a year in preparation for his travel to Mauritania, where he would study and further his training in killing, suicide bombing, and identifying and murdering U.S. military personnel. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to lying to authorities and conspiring to defraud the IRS and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Robertson was arrested on a firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January 2012. On March 14, 2012, federal authorities charged him with conspiring to defraud the IRS, which he was convicted of in December 2013.
While in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Robertson was considered so dangerous, he was kept in shackles and assigned his own guards. Whenever he was transported to court, a seven-car caravan of armed federal marshals escorted him. He was initially moved into solitary confinement after prison authorities believed he was radicalizing up to 36 of his fellow prisoners.
In seeking enhanced terrorism charges during sentencing for the two crimes, prosecutors said Robertson has been involved with terrorism activities, “…focused on training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them himself” … “overseas instead of inside the United States.”
Yet efforts by federal prosecutors to tack on another 10 years to his sentence, based on enhanced terrorism charges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were not persuasive enough for U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell, who freed Robertson in June 2015 with time served.
Robertson had denied being involved with terrorist activities, in court and in postings on social media and in statements from his attorney to Fox News.
Federal law enforcement has been familiar with Robertson since 1991.
As a former U.S. Marine who became the leader known as “Ali Baba” of a notorious New York gang “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”, Robertson and his crew robbed more than 10 banks, private homes and post offices at gunpoint, shot three police officers, and attacked one cop after he was injured by a homemade pipe bomb.
During the same period, federal authorities claimed Robertson served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who led the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended, both claims Robertson denied. Robertson has adamantly denied the claims.
After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the gang, prosecutors cut a deal with Robertson, and let him serve four years in prison before going to work undercover for the FBI between 2004 and 2007 to document terrorists’ plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
Many of the court’s filings, including Robertson’s own testimony from his most recent criminal case, remain under federal seal, which means only prosecutors, the judge and the defense can review the records.
Cohen told FoxNews.com in a statement that his client “never taught or condoned violence in any way.”
“In fact for his federal case the judge did not find terrorist acts, which led to his sentence of time served,” Cohen sai
Latin America, Hezbollah Moving Cocaine, Funding Terror
Hezbollah moving ‘tons of cocaine’ in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations
Taylor/Dinan/WashingtonTimes: Hezbollah’s terrorism finance operations are thriving across Latin America months after the Drug Enforcement Administration linked the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group to drug cartels in the region, U.S. lawmakers were told this week.
Former DEA operations chief Michael Braun said Hezbollah is “moving [multiple] tons of cocaine” from South America to Europe and has developed “the most sophisticated money laundering scheme or schemes that we have ever witnessed.”
The agency announced in February that it had arrested several Hezbollah operatives accused of working with a major Colombian drug cartel to traffic drugs to Europe and launder money through Lebanon. Those arrests come against a backdrop of rising fears in Washington about smuggling connections between Middle East terrorist groups and the Western Hemisphere.
Hezbollah has “metastasized into a hydra with international connections that the likes of [the Islamic State] and groups like al Qaeda could only hope to have,” Mr. Braun told the House Financial Services Committee.
Adding to concerns about security threats from Central and South America, intelligence reports have also tracked how smugglers managed to sneak illegal immigrants from the Middle Eastern and South Asia straight to the doorstep of the U.S. — including helping one Afghan who U.S. authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.
Immigration officials identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed this month by The Washington Times.
Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.”
Concerns about Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America have surged the DEA’s announcement in February that top operatives from the group’s so-called Business Affairs Component, or BAC, “have established business relationships” with South American drug cartels such as the Colombia-based Oficina de Envigado, a crime syndicate “responsible for supplying large quantities of cocaine to the European and United States drug markets.”
The DEA said several of the BAC’s Europe-based operatives had been arrested on charges of trafficking drugs and laundering money from South America to purchase weapons and finance the group’s military activities in Syria. The agency described an intricate network of money couriers who collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East.
“The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers,” it said, adding that “a large portion of the drug proceeds was found to transit through Lebanon, and a significant percentage of these proceeds are benefiting terrorist organizations, namely Hezbollah.”
The DEA said seven countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, were involved in an ongoing investigation. But few details were provided about how many suspects had been apprehended or where they are being held.
Officials said the most significant arrest was of Mohamad Noureddine, whom the DEA accused of being a Lebanese money launderer for Hezbollah. A week prior to the announcement, the Treasury Department had imposed sanctions freezing any U.S. accounts tied to Mr. Noureddine as well as to Hamdi Zaher El Dine, another suspected money launderer.
Decades of activity
U.S. officials have long been wary of Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamic group.
While it has a mainstream political arm in Lebanon, officials have linked the group to terrorist attacks in various corners of the world over the past 25 years — the vast majority targeting Israel. The State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s and has characterized Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism largely on grounds that it supplies the group with weapons.
But the full scope of Hezbollah’s operations has long been a subject of debate in Washington. The DEA’s recent claims followed years of speculation about Iranian activities in Latin America.
Responding to pressure from Republican lawmakers, the State Department conducted a formal probe into the matter in 2013 and issued a report claiming that Iran was not supporting any active terrorist cells in the region.
While the report said the number of Iranian officials operating in Latin America had increased, the report concluded Tehran had far less influence in Latin America than critics claimed.
But former officials like Mr. Braun, who retired as DEA chief of operations in 2008, say Hezbollah is extremely active in the region.
President Obama signed the “Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act” last year, authorizing a range of actions, including sanctions, to block Hezbollah’s ability to fund itself.
Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow on Iran and illicit finance with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing that Congress and the administration should use the law to “aggressively focus” on Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America.
Brazilian connection
Mr. Ottolenghi pointed to the group’s “vast network of support,” particularly in Brazil, which is home to some 7 million people of Lebanese descent, including an estimated 1 million Shiite Muslims.
“Hezbollah generates loyalty among the local Shia communities by managing their religious and educational structures,” Mr. Ottolenghi told the hearing. “It then leverages loyalty to solicit funds and use business connections to its own advantage, including, critically, to facilitate its interactions with organized crime.”
He cited a 2014 report by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that outlined a connection between Hezbollah and the Primeiro Comando da Capital, a Sao Paulo-based prison gang, which is widely regarded to be among the country’s biggest exporters of cocaine.
“Drug cartels need middlemen, as well as commodity and service providers, for the supply line and delivery to cartels in Colombia, Venezuela and Central America,” Mr. Ottolenghi said. “They need assistance facilitating transit to West Africa before drugs cross the Sahara on their way to Western Europe and enabling the producers, refiners and cartels to launder their revenues and acquire the accessories for the trade in the process.”