English Translation
The Turkish Islamic IHH - Charity, behind a flotilla of aid ships that was raided by Israeli forces on its way to Gaza had ties to terrorism networks, including a 1999 Al Qaeda plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, France's former top anti-terrorism judge said, on Wednesday 06/02/2010.
The IHH had "clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and Jihad," former investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, 67, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who led the French judiciary's counter-terrorosm unit for nearly two decades before retiring in 2007, didn't indicate whether IHH now has terror ties, but said it did when he investigated it in the late 1990s. The former judge, renowned for tracking down convicted terrorist Carlos the Jackal, said he didn't believe the IHH could have been infiltrated by terrorists without its knowledge. "It's hard to prove, but all elements of the investigation showed that part of the NGO served to hide jihad-type activities," Bruguiere said. "I'm convinced this was a clear strategy, known by IHH."
"They were basically helping Al Qaeda when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target USA soil," he said.
Some members of an international terrorism cell known as the Fateh Kamel network then worked at the IHH, he said. Kamel, an Algerian-Canadian dual national, had ties to the nascent Al Qaeda, Bruguiere said. French investigators found in the 1990s that "several members of Fateh Kamel's network worked at the IHH as a cover," Bruguiere said. "It was too systematic and too widespread for the NGO (non-governmental organization) not to know" their real goal, he added.
Among Kamel's followers was Ahmed Ressam, the Los Angeles International Airport attack ploter. "IHH had a role in the organization that led to the plot," Bruguiere said, reiterating sworn testimony he made in a USA Federal Court during Ressam's trial. Ressam is serving a 22-year prison sentence (see -LOS ANGELES MILLENNIUM) .
IHH vehemently denies ties to radical groups. The group is not among some 45 groups listed as terrorists by the USA Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Nine people on board the IHH flotilla were killed by Israeli forces on Monday.
"We are a legal organization," IHH board member Omer Faruk Korkmaz said late Wednesday in response to Bruguiere's statements. "We have nothing to do with any illegal organization," he said.
In Washington, USA State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on Wednesday that "we know that IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years. That is obviously of great concern to us" (see - Turkish Radicalization).
But, he said the U.S. could not "validate" that IHH has connections to Al Qaeda.
SOURCE: Global Jihad
