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FTR #381 Al-Taqwa the Muslim Brotherhood & Chechnya

Exam­in­ing the oper­a­tions of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Chech­nya and the Unit­ed States, this broad­cast high­lights the rela­tion­ship between that Islam­o­fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, the Al Taqwa milieu and ele­ments of the Sau­di elite. (See more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood [1], Al Qae­da and Chech­nya [2], and Al Taqwa [3].)

1. The pro­gram begins with an arti­cle which touch­es on Russ­ian charges that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al Qae­da-relat­ed ele­ments are involved with the Chechen rebels. The arti­cle is patron­iz­ing and dis­mis­sive in tone, despite the fact that the pres­ence in Chech­nya of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Wah­habi and Al Qae­da relat­ed ele­ments is well doc­u­ment­ed. “Three years after Russ­ian forces poured into Chech­nya for the sec­ond time, the war grinds on, but Russia’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the fight with­out end has changed. No longer are 85,000 Russ­ian troops and police offi­cers sim­ply engaged in crush­ing a bat­tle for inde­pen­dence; instead, Chech­nya has become Russia’s war on ter­ror.” (“Rus­sia Recasts Bog in Cau­ca­sus as War on Ter­ror” by Steven Lee Myers; The New York Times; 10/5/2002; p. A1.)

“Using the ratio­nale and some­times the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s antiter­ror­ism cam­paign, com­man­ders here said this week that the Chechen war is financed, armed and increas­ing­ly fought by Islam­ic mil­i­tants from abroad. The shift explains Russia’s roil­ing ten­sions with Geor­gia the for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic bor­der­ing Chech­nya that pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has accused of shel­ter­ing what he calls Chechen and inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ists. . .” (Idem.)

“The accu­sa­tions against Georgia–like the accu­sa­tions against the Chechens are spon­sored by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­er for­eign fighters—appear root­ed in Russia’s frus­tra­tion and a desire to exter­nal blame for the con­tin­ued fight­ing.” (Ibid.; p. A6.)

2. FTR#’s 330, 334, and 337 describe [Sau­di intel­li­gence chief] Prince Turki’s res­ig­na­tion short­ly before the 9/11 attacks. In addi­tion, FTR#343, among oth­er pro­grams, dis­cuss­es the alle­ga­tion that Tur­ki “ran” Osama Bin Laden. An intrigu­ing (and detailed) piece of schol­ar­ship recent­ly linked Tur­ki, the Sau­di Roy­al fam­i­ly, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Youssef Nada (Al Taqwa’s founder.) In turn, the broad­cast delin­eates these ele­ments’ activ­i­ties vis a vis the Chechen rebels. “The pres­i­dent of the Al Taqwa Bank Group is Youssef Mustapha Nada, nat­u­ral­ized Ital­ian, and a mem­ber of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Jamaa-al-Islamiya, which is direct­ly allied with Al Qae­da through Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, said by some intel­li­gence sources to be the brains behind bin Laden. When the Bahamas closed Al Taqwa Bank Ltd. ear­ly this year, Swiss author­i­ties required a name change in Al Taqwa Bank, which then became reg­is­tered in Switzer­land as Nada Man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion SA. It is the same Al Taqwa Bank.” (“The Pol­i­tics of Three—Pakistan, Sau­di Ara­bia, Israel” by Paul W. Rasche; Stu­di­en von Zeit­fra­gen; 35. Jahrgang Inter­ne­tAus­gabe 2001; p. 6; accessed at www.studien-von-zeit…bal/Coalition_Risks/coalition_risks.html .)

3. Nada’s rela­tion­ship with the Broth­er­hood, the Saud­is and Islamist finance is high­light­ed in the fol­low­ing pas­sage. “In 1970, Youssef Nada moved to Sau­di Ara­bia and, with help from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, estab­lished con­tact with mem­bers of the Sau­di Roy­al fam­i­ly, and found­ed a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny in Riyadh, much the same as the Bin Laden fam­i­ly. He remained active in Riyadh, and soon found­ed the first Islam­ic bank in Egypt, the Faisal Bank.” (Idem.)

4. Review­ing infor­ma­tion first pre­sent­ed in FTR#343, the broad­cast under­scores the rela­tion­ship between for­mer Sau­di intel­li­gence chief Prince Tur­ki, Bin Laden, Nada and the Faisal Islam­ic Bank. “The Faisal Islam­ic Bank of Sau­di Ara­bia is the head bank of a num­ber of affil­i­at­ed Islam­ic Banks under that name across the Islam­ic world from Egypt to Pak­istan to the Emi­rates and Malaysia. The head of Faisal Islam­ic Bank of Sau­di Ara­bia is for­mer Sau­di Intel­li­gence Chief, Tur­ki al-Faisal. Faisal Islam­ic Bank is direct­ly involved in run­ning accounts for bin Laden and his asso­ciates, and has been named by Lux­em­bourg bank­ing author­i­ties in this regard.” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

5. The nexus out­lined above is inti­mate­ly involved with the Al Hara­main reli­gious char­i­ty, alleged­ly used to chan­nel funds to the Chechen rebels. “In Sudan, Osama bin Laden and Al Qai­da have been named as prin­ci­pals in the Shamal bank in the 1990’s. The bank trans­ferred the funds for the US Embassy bomb­ings in East Africa in 1998, accord­ing to tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny in New York. A 15% share in al Shamal is held by wealthy Sau­di financier, Saleh Abdul­lah Kamel of the Dal­lah al Bara­ka Group, which owns the Jed­dah al Bara­ka bank. The oth­er non-Sudanese share­hold­er of the Khar­toum al Shamal bank is Faisal Islam­ic Bank. Russ­ian FSB intel­li­gence has charged that al Bara­ka Bank was used by a Sau­di reli­gious char­i­ty, Al Hara­main, to fun­nel funds to Islam­ic ter­ror­ists tied to al Qai­da in Chech­nya.” (Idem.)

6. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR#’s 330, 338 and 353, the pro­gram reviews the alleged role of the Muwafaq foun­da­tion in fund­ing Al Qae­da and oth­er Islamist ele­ments. “The direc­tor of the Bosn­ian Muwafaq oper­a­tion was the Tunisian-born busi­ness­man Shafiq Aya­di who car­ries a Bosn­ian pass­port. Shafiq Aya­di was placed on the U.S. ter­ror­ism list after 9/11. Islam­ic NGO’s in the war years were fre­quent­ly searched and, again and again, weapons and oth­er mate­ri­als were dis­cov­ered meant for the Muja­hadin in Bosnia. It is cer­tain that both the Croat buro of both the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion and the Sau­di High Com­mis­sion for Relief served as a step on the way to the Bosn­ian front for many Muja­hadin. Many of them were from the non-Bosn­ian Islamist El Mudza­hid Brigade, who treat­ed Ser­bian POW’s hor­ri­bly. It also turned out that a Sau­di cit­i­zen named Abdul Hadi al-Gah­tani, who in the city of Zeni­ca in 1994 killed the British aid work­er Paul Goodall because he had shown too much inter­est in the activ­i­ties of the Islamists, had iden­ti­ty papers (ein Ausweis) from the Sau­di High Relief Com­mis­sion. A Bosn­ian court that had sen­tenced al-Gath­ani in absen­tia to a long jail term described him as ‘direc­tor of the Sau­di High Com­mis­sion in Zeni­ca.’ Al-Gath­ani, how­ev­er, nev­er served his sen­tence, because he escaped from deten­tion.” (“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; pri­vate­ly pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by the author; p. 3.) (For more about the Dohnanyis’ work on the Al Taqwa/Saudi labyrinth, see FTR#342. For more about Al Taqwa, see FTR#’s 335, 336, 338, 341, 343, 351–361, 368, 371, 376, 377, 378.)

“The Sau­di High Com­mis­sion was direct­ed by King Fahd’s broth­er, Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz. In a bit of spin con­trol, a deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the High Com­mis­sion, Fahd al-Zakari, in Octo­ber 2001 told the press in Sara­je­vo that the Com­mis­sion only employed men with a ‘moral­ly clean back­ground’ but it can’t judge what is con­cealed from it. Muwafaq Foun­da­tion founder Yas­sim al-Qadi advances sim­i­lar argu­ments. In the Wall Street Jour­nal, al-Qadi cit­ed a report on the foun­da­tion from the Dutch secret ser­vice that described it as an ‘impor­tant instru­ment of rad­i­cal Mus­lims’ but also said that it was unclear to what extent the Saud­is were them­selves aware of the dan­ger.” (Idem.)

7. Next, the dis­cus­sion fur­ther illu­mi­nates the al-Hara­mayne foun­da­tion, men­tioned above. Note that al-Hara­mayne was alleged­ly involved with bin Laden. “In the begin­ning of the 1990’s orig­i­nat­ing from Sudan, there was reg­is­tered in Vien­na the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) with Sau­di mon­ey and sup­port from the Iran­ian secret police, the Vevak, which sup­plied mon­ey and weapons to the Mus­lim fac­tions in the Bosnia war. There was also estab­lished al-Hara­mayne that sup­plied weapons to Muja­hadin in Afghanistan.” (Idem.)

“The ‘human­i­tar­i­an’ orga­ni­za­tion al-Hara­mayne was found­ed in 1992 by the Sau­di Reli­gion Min­is­ter Saleh bin Abdu­laz­iz al Sheikh as the spear­head for the aggres­sive expan­sion of Wah­habi beliefs. In the views of Russ­ian and Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors, the al-Hara­mayne Foun­da­tion was linked with the Sau­di finan­cial con­cern Dal­lah al-Bara­ka whose founder and major­i­ty hold­er, Saleh Abdul­lah Kamel, ear­li­er served among oth­er things as the Gen­er­al Inspec­tor of Finance for the Sau­di monar­chy. Kamel’s name sur­faced after 9/11 in con­nec­tion with the role the Sudanese finan­cial world played in con­nec­tion with the activ­i­ties of Osama bin-Laden.” (Idem.)

Note that some of the Sau­di “char­i­ties” alleged­ly spon­sored trips to the USA by Chechen rebel lead­ers. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of col­lu­sion between petro­le­um-relat­ed ele­ments of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty should not be too read­i­ly dis­missed. Such pos­si­ble con­nec­tions may account for the tone adopt­ed by the Times writer. “In 1999, al Hara­mayne opened in Azer­bai­jan an office of the—until then unknown—‘Foundation for Chech­nya.’ A year before the Russ­ian secret ser­vice FIS dis­cov­ered that the lead­ing man­age­ment of the Al-Bara­ka Group includ­ing Hafez Abu Bakr Mohammed of ‘Al Bara­ka Invest­ment and Devel­op­ment’ had financed trips by Chech­nya rebel lead­ers to the USA. In Decem­ber 1999, a mem­ber of a Euro­pean secret ser­vice based in Karachi over­heard Sheik Abu Omar, who rep­re­sent­ed al-Hara­mayne in Chech­nya, being greet­ed by the Taliban’s coun­sel, who rep­re­sent­ed al-Hara­mayne in Chech­nya, being greet­ed by the Taliban’s coun­sel, who praised Sheik Abu Omar for his aid in help­ing out in the war against the Rus­sians in Chech­nya. An elite Russ­ian unit mon­i­tor­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the war heard a con­ver­sa­tion from Geor­gia say­ing that al-Hara­mayne must avoid being iden­ti­fied as the ‘inciter of Jihad.’ The Russ­ian FIS esti­mates that al-Hara­mayne con­tributed $50 mil­lion to the cause and also helped send fight­ers with oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in Bosnia and Koso­vo to Chech­nya.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

“Nor did al-Hara­mayne neglect Afghanistan. The Afghan office, head­ed by Nass­er bin Mohammed al Gilale, was actu­al­ly based in the Sau­di Embassy. When the North­ern Alliance took Kab­ul, he was detained by the North­ern Alliance. Exam­i­na­tions of records show that the group had instruc­tions from Riyadh to aid Sau­di cit­i­zens. But all Sau­di diplo­mats and civil­ians had left Afghanistan when the war broke out and the only remain­ing groups of Sau­di cit­i­zens were al Qai­da mem­bers. Accord­ing to one of the detained Tal­iban pris­on­ers, the Sau­di al Qai­da mem­bers always got inter­ven­tions on their behalf from al-Hara­mayne.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

8.Supplementing pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion on anoth­er of George W. Bush’s Al Qae­da-linked busi­ness associates—the Bin Mah­fouz [4] family—the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops the Sau­di char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions and their links to Islamo-fas­cist ter­ror. This pow­er­ful Sau­di fam­i­ly (in addi­tion to their links to the BCCI and George W. Bush) has strong links to the milieu of Al Taqwa and bin Laden. “Anoth­er key group sus­pect­ed of aid­ing Al Qai­da by pass­ing on ‘Zakat’ funds is the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Relief Orga­ni­za­tion (IIRO) which until Sep­tem­ber 1999 shared the same Oxford address as the Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (IDF) of the Sau­di mil­lion­aire Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Also at the same address is the Oxford Trust for Islam­ic Stud­ies to which the bin Laden fam­i­ly year­ly con­tributes a great deal of mon­ey. The IDF, like its sis­ter com­pa­ny Sed­co Ser­vices Ltd. (part of Khalid bin Mahfouz’s Sau­di Eco­nom­ic and Devel­op­ment Corporation—Sedco), is now in Lon­don, and is direct­ed by Khalid’s broth­er Mohammed Sal­im bin Mah­fouz and the British weapons deal­er Mohammed Saleh Affara, who is of Yemeni ori­gin. Affara helped bro­ker a series of weapons con­tracts (code­named ‘Sawari‑2’) between Sau­di Ara­bia and France. Con­tact to Osama bin Laden, it is said, also comes via the Sudan-based part of the orga­ni­za­tion ‘Blessed Relief’ that is direct­ed by Khalid’s son Abdul Rah­man bin Mah­fouz. The orga­ni­za­tion was sus­pect­ed by the Amer­i­can and Egypt­ian secret ser­vices of being involved in plan­ning an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Hos­ni Mubarak when he was mak­ing a state vis­it to Ethiopia. In the cof­fers of the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic relief Orga­ni­za­tion one finds Zakat mon­ey from the Gene­va-based DMI and relief aid from the Lugano-based Al Taqwa group.” (Idem.)

The pro­gram presents more infor­ma­tion about the links between the Sau­di char­i­ties, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Chechen rebels. “Of course these groups vig­or­ous­ly protest against charges that they are a 5th col­umn of ter­ror­ism. So where is there an answer for the charge that $7 mil­lion was sent from the Com­mit­tee for Char­i­ty and the Sheik Eid-ben-Mohammed al-Thani Foun­da­tion (both based in Qatar) that sent this mon­ey in Decem­ber 1999 to the Muja­hadin in Chech­nya. Only the mer­ci­less exam­i­na­tion of their books and the books of oth­er such groups can answer the fol­low­ing accu­sa­tions regard­ing. . . the charge that the blessed Relief group in Birm­ing­hamn, England—a key part of the Mus­lim broth­er­hood and also reg­is­tered as a UN NGO—was used by bin Laden and has oper­a­tions in Chech­nya, Azer­bai­jan, and Kash­mir where it runs weapons under the cov­er of human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance.” (Idem.)

9. The con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram dis­cuss­es links between the milieu of the Third Reich (in its above-ground and under­ground phas­es), Youssef Nada, Al Taqwa, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, its oper­a­tive Said Ramadan and (among oth­er ele­ments) some rad­i­cal­ized African-Amer­i­can mus­lims. (Note that the Labeviere book is accessed in many of the broad­casts deal­ing with the Broth­er­hood anno­tat­ed at the begin­ning of this pro­gram descrip­tion.) “Any­one who exam­ines the al-Taqwa affair rapid­ly comes across the pres­ence of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB), as al-Taqwa served as one of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s key bank­ing insti­tu­tions in the West. In order to under­stand the MB’s pres­ence in the West in general—and Switzer­land in particular—it is absolute­ly nec­es­sary to grasp the vital role played by the late Said Ramadan, an extreme­ly famous fig­ure inside the Arab world but vir­tu­al­ly unknown in the West.” (Ibid.; p. 12.)

“In his book Dol­lars for Ter­ror, Richard Labeviere gives us a crit­i­cal pro­file of Said Ramadan. Ramadan mar­ried Wafa Has­san al-Bana and thus became the son-in-law of Has­san al-Bana, the founder of the MB. Ramadan next led a famous brigade of Arab vol­un­teers to fight against Israel in the 1948 war. When Nass­er cracked down on the MB in Egypt in 1954, Ramadan relo­cat­ed first to Sau­di Ara­bia and then to Pak­istan. He then moved to Europe, after get­ting Sau­di back­ing for the prop­a­ga­tion of Islam in Europe in par­tic­u­lar. At first, Ramadan opened a MB-backed Islam­ic cen­ter in Munich, in part in a reflec­tion of the MB’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazis dat­ing back to the late 1930’s. (Labeviere in this regard also cites Egypt­ian reports that Youssef Nada worked for the Abwehr (Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence) in the 1940’s. It should also be recalled that Fran­cois Genoud, the Swiss Nazi banker, began devel­op­ing con­tacts in the Arab world on behalf of Ger­man intel­li­gence begin­ning in the 1930’s.]” (Ibid.; p. 13.)

“While in Ger­many, Ramadan defend­ed his doc­tor­al the­sis on Islam­ic law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. How­ev­er the Saud­is advised Ramadan to make Switzer­land his main base of oper­a­tions and at the height of the Alger­ian war, Ramadan opened up what is now a famous Islam­ic Cen­ter in Eaux-Vives, near Gene­va, in 1961. [It was at this cen­ter that Achmed Huber first con­vert­ed to Islam. –KC] Said Ramadan remained a top Euro­pean leader of the MB until his death in August 1995. This, in effect, means that Nada, Him­mat, Nasred­din, and all the oth­er MB lead­ers asso­ci­at­ed with al-Taqwa, were essen­tial­ly in Ramadan’s orbit. As Labeviere writes, after being con­demned in absen­tia to forced labor for life by the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, Ramadan first ‘set­tled in Munich, then in Switzer­land, where he man­ages the movement’s fund.’” (Idem.)

10. Kevin Coogan presents the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the found­ing of Al Taqwa may have been at the insti­ga­tion of Ramadan. One should not fail to note that, in addi­tion to the Wah­habi con­nec­tions of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood milieu pre­sent­ed here, a Huber-Nada-Iran link may well be impor­tant. “In a May 6, 2002 arti­cle in Le Monde, author Piotr Smo­lar quotes Achmed Huber as say­ing that he first met Youssef Nada only dur­ing the course of a con­fer­ence orga­nized in Iran in 1988. It was here that Nada approached Huber about par­tic­i­pa­tion in the found­ing of al-Taqwa. The rel­a­tive­ly brief time between Huber’s meet­ing Nada and his par­tic­i­pa­tion with al-Taqwa sug­gests that both men may have been oper­at­ing for the same larg­er con­cern, name­ly Ramadan’s MB oper­a­tion in Switzer­land.” (Idem.)

“Equal­ly inter­est­ing is that Huber and Nada met in Iran. In the late 1970’s, it has been report­ed that the Saud­is were said to have decid­ed to stop back­ing Ramadan’s Swiss cen­ter and in 1978, they opened their own group (l’Association Cul­turelle Islamique de Gen­eve) because the Sau­di monar­chy dis­agreed with Ramadan’s embrace of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. [It should be recalled that Huber also became one of the Iran­ian revolution’s lead­ing West­ern sup­port­ers in the late 1970’s]” (Idem.)

11.Recapitulating a con­nec­tion between Ramadan and an African-Amer­i­can who oper­at­ed on behalf of Ramadan and the Ira­ni­ans, the pro­gram under­scores a rela­tion­ship touched on in FTR#373. “Incred­i­bly, in the mid­dle 1970s Said Ramadan actu­al­ly recruit­ed an Amer­i­can named David Theodore Belfield, who lat­er changed his name to Dawud Salahud­din. Salahud­din was a black Amer­i­can who became rad­i­cal­ized and adopt­ed a mix­ture of Third World­ist rad­i­cal­ism and Mus­lim beliefs. He lat­er served as an assas­sin for the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment and on July 21, 1980, Salahud­din mur­dered Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a for­mer press attaché at the Iran­ian Embassy under the Shah who was liv­ing in Bethes­da, Mary­land, where he helped direct a pro-Shah exile group, the Iran Free­dom Foun­da­tion. After the assas­si­na­tion, Salahud­din first fled to Gene­va and then to Iran. Salahud­din first encoun­tered anti-Shah and pro-Khome­i­ni Iran­ian exiles in Wash­ing­ton. How­ev­er his life real­ly began to change in May 1975, when he met Said Ramadan, who was the guest speak­er at the Islam­ic Cen­ter, a large mosque on Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue. [On Ramadan and Salahud­din, see David Ott­away, ‘The Lone Assas­sin’ pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post mag­a­zine on August 25, 1996 as well as Ira Sil­ver­man, ‘An Amer­i­can Ter­ror­ist’ pub­lished in The New York­er, August 5, 2002. Both are avail­able on the web.] Salahud­din and Ramadan then lived togeth­er through the sum­mer of 1975 in a house in Wash­ing­ton near Howard Uni­ver­si­ty. Salahud­din to this day describes Ramadan as his advi­sor and spir­i­tu­al guide. There is also strong evi­dence that Ramadan was involved with hook­ing Salahud­din up to the Ira­ni­ans for the assas­si­na­tion of Tabatabai. Once in Iran, Salahud­din told The New York­er that he had exten­sive­ly trav­eled through the Mus­lim world as a kind of diplo­mat for Ramadan and that in 1986 he made ‘cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tions on behalf of Ramadan to Mua­mar Qaddafi’ through one of Qaddafi’s cousins and in 1995, he ‘deliv­ered a mes­sage from Ramadan to Pres­i­dent Burhanud­din Rab­bain, in Afghanistan, warn­ing him that the Tal­iban had ties to the CIA.’” (Ibid.; pp. 13–14.)

12. The pro­gram con­cludes by not­ing that Al Taqwa’s Achmed Huber con­tin­ues to main­tain good rela­tions with African-Amer­i­can Mus­lims. As Mr. Emory notes, this is of par­tic­u­lar inter­est at this time—the day before this pro­gram was record­ed, the media were dom­i­nat­ed by the sto­ry of some African-Amer­i­cans arrest­ed in the Pacif­ic North­west as alleged Al Qae­da oper­a­tives. In addi­tion to the fact that recruit­ment of black Amer­i­cans by Islam­o­fas­cists rep­re­sents a threat to U.S. inter­nal secu­ri­ty, the phe­nom­e­non plays into the hands of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Por­tray­ing African-Amer­i­cans as ter­ror­ists, they can jus­ti­fy exces­sive sur­veil­lance of black com­mu­ni­ties and dis­cred­it the Democ­rats, for whom African-Amer­i­cans have tra­di­tion­al­ly vot­ed in over­whelm­ing num­bers. One should also note that, with a Sen­ate seat being hot­ly con­test­ed in New Jer­sey (poten­tial­ly deter­min­ing par­ty con­trol of the Sen­ate), Amiri Bara­ka (nee Leroi Jones), the Poet Lau­re­ate of New Jer­sey, pub­lished a poem blam­ing the World Trade Cen­ter attack on Jews and repeat­ing the thor­ough­ly dis­cred­it­ed charge that 4,000 Jews were warned not to report for work at the Cen­ter on 9/11. The tim­ing of the pub­li­ca­tion of this poem by The Artist For­mer­ly Known As Leroi was for­tu­itous for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, in that Jews and blacks are two of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s dom­i­nant con­stituen­cies. The poem can­not but work to divide the two groups at this impor­tant time. “The sto­ry of Ramadan and Salahud­din is also remark­able giv­en that (as I doc­u­ment in my arti­cle on Huber now on the web), Huber to this day main­tains close ties to rad­i­cal black Islamist fanat­ics based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., such as Imam Abdul Alim Musa and Sheikh Mohammed al-Asi, both of whom are asso­ci­at­ed with the pro-Khome­i­ni Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Islam­ic Thought (ICIT). Both man also main­tain good ties to the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by the late Khal­lid Moham­mad after he split from the Nation of Islam.” (Idem.)