In September I pointed out the following: BILLIONAIRE Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has raised his stake in media giant News Corporation to 5.46 per cent of voting shares and backed the leadership of chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch, lifting the company's shares.
Ironically enough, tonight on Subject2Discussion I'll be discussing well-documented connections between a prominent Caribbean crime organization, also linked to the funding of Hezbollah as recently as 2001 - and how it appears a member of said family has been exploiting Fox News, the Natalee Holloway story and America to weaken Dutch control in Aruba by spreading now widely reported rumors and fueling a boycott of the tiny island.
Aruba is a free trade zone with easy access to the US. If successful, the political changes this would likely cause in Aruba could weaken efforts by the United States to combat smuggling, money laundering, drug trafficking and even international terror. Holland has been a strong ally to the US and co-operates with the FBI and DEA in efforts to control this significant problem.
It's possible that, having been duped by a skilled political operator, Fox News has actually been fueling the fires for a boycott which could have significant implications for important United States interests. The lack of serious MSM reporting on the Natalee Holloway story, having dismissed it as another pretty white girl gone missing, has allowed this story to go virtually unreported until now.
In 1996, a group of young Lebanese men began appearing regularly at the JR Tobacco warehouse in North Carolina, carrying paper bags filled with enough cash to purchase 299 cartons of cigarettes each (the maximum per person allowable by law). An observant security guard at the warehouse called the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which, together with the FBI, pursued an investigation, that resulted in the July 2000 arrests of the men for their participation in a cigarette smuggling scheme. Millions of dollars in profits had been “funneled” to finance the Hezbollah in Lebanon. [92]
This investigation (code-named Operation Smoke Screen) identified nine of the men as members of a Hezbollah cell located in Charlotte, North Carolina. Some of the nine, led by Mohamad Youssef Hammoud, were further indicted for having provided material support to a terrorist organization, specifically “currency, financial services, training, false documentation and identification, communications equipment, explosives, and other physical assets to Hezbollah; in order to facilitate its violent attacks.” [93] They were convicted under a provision of the 2001 Patriot Act, which states that “it is now a crime for anyone subject to U.S. jurisdiction to provide anything of value - including their own efforts or expertise - to organizations designated as ‘foreign terrorist organization.’ It does not matter whether the persons providing such support intend their donations to be used for violent purposes, or whether actual terrorism results. If someone subject to U.S. jurisdiction provides, or even attempts to provide, any material support or resources to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Abu Sayyaf Group or any of the other 34 designated groups, that person can be prosecuted in the U.S. courts.” [94]
The evidence linking Hammoud and another conspirator to Hezbollah included: “Anti-American and anti-Israeli videos found in Mohamad Hammoud’s home; FBI wire taps of Mohamad Hammoud speaking by phone with Sheikh Abbas Harake, Hezbollah’s military commander in Beirut; a letter found in Mohamad Hammoud’s home urging him to donate money to the resistance in Lebanon and suggesting that he had raised money in the past for Hezbollah’s military operations; [and finally] a photo of Mohamad Hammoud as a teenager at a Hezbollah training camp in Lebanon.” [95]
Venezuela Venezuela, and its neighboring island, Aruba, have long had a well established drug trafficking, drug smuggling, and money laundering network, which had been created in the early 70s by the Cosa Nostra’s Cuntrera-Caruana family. [175] In the 1990s, the Aruba-based Mansur family, of Lebanese descent, took over the network, adding cigarette smuggling to their operations. According to U.S. court documents from March 2001,“Much of the proceeds garnered by the Mansur brothers went to Hezbollah.” [176]
The Mansur brother's were already in the 90's under strong suspicion of drug trafficking and money laundering. Please read this: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/undocs/session67/view883.htm
Posted by: TJ | Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 07:33 AM
And read this: http://www.tni.org/archives/tblick/aruba.htm
Posted by: TJ | Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 07:48 AM
How could anybody believe that has anything to do with missing girl that was with the three suspects. Anybody can figure out what happened to the girl.
Posted by: Allan Klu | Sunday, January 22, 2006 at 08:33 PM