Financial aid for terror?

By Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff

published at www.zeit.de/eu-hilfsgelder at 14.8.2002
 

non-official translation by Yair Malachi

The European Union pays among else 10 million Euro budgetary aid to Arafat’s authority each month. According to the Israeli analysis the PA created a shadow budget, in order to finance the terror war against Israel, among others by conversion manipulations of the European funds. Furthermore funds of the PA flowed to the Tanzim militia and the Al Aqsa martyr brigades, the militant organizations of the Fatah movement. The European Union denies the accusations that its aid funds were abused. Thus EU External Relations Commissioner Christopher Patten said to the external committee of the European parliament on 19 June: "we have found no evidence, I repeat, we have found no evidence of EU funds being used for purposes other than those agreed between the EU and the PA."

The Israeli government first used the documents on the level of diplomacy and then in the passed weeks made the documents accessible to the public. Their authenticity is not doubted in the western countries, also not by the European union. The Palestinians called it mere falsifications, then as irrelevant. Recently they required the documents of the Israeli government back.

The Israeli accusations released a heated public debate in Europe: Are the accusations founded? Are they only part of Sharon’s campaign of denunciation of Palestinian leader Arafat?

In order to let the readers judge by themselves, die ZEIT publishes now for the first time the whole debate in its original (English) documents.

• Document 1 - Part 1 (ca. 1,4 MB)
• Document 1 - Part 2 (ca. 1,1 MB)
• Document 1 - Part 3 (ca. 1,4 MB)

• Document 2 - Part 1 (ca. 941 KB)
• Document 2 - Part 2 (ca. 1,0 MB)

• Document 3 - Part 1 (ca. 800 KB)
• Document 3 - Part 2 (ca. 730 KB)
• Document 3 - Part 3 (ca. 760 KB)

• Document 4 (ca. 536 KB)

• Document 5 (ca. 217 KB)

• Document 6 (ca. 827 KB)

• Document 7 (ca. 578 KB)

• Document 8 (ca. 617 KB)

•  Document 9 (ca. 294 KB)

Life and death of Abu Nidal tells us a great deal about our enemies

By Michael Ledeen

published at http://jewishworldreview.com/michael/ledeen.html
 

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com - The news that the infamous terrorist chieftain Abu Nidal was found shot to death in his home in Baghdad floated through the news Monday with little comment. This is doubly unfortunate, both because he was a major actor on the world stage -- in many ways the most interesting of the terrorist leaders -- and because his life and perhaps his death tell us a great deal about our enemies.

Abu Nidal is usually portrayed (falsely, as it turns out) as a nutty extremist who broke off from Yasser Arafat's PLO to create his own, more violent organization. He was the evil force behind some of the worst terror assaults of the mid-Eighties, including the bloodbaths at the Rome and Vienna airports, and the gunning down of disloyal Arabs in the Middle East and Western Europe. By the end of 1985, most students of terrorism considered him the most lethal terrorist, and he was the prime target of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center in those years.

This was a mighty challenge, because Abu Nidal himself was extremely paranoid, and his followers were subjected to endless security checks. Members of the organization spied on one another, and the slightest deviation from routine was punished, often by death. How to penetrate such an organization?

The CIA's Duane Clarridge wisely decided that penetration could not succeed, and he undertook to destroy it from the outside. Clarridge and his associates were able to assemble an amazingly complete picture of the Abu Nidal gang, and then waged psychological warfare against him. They repeatedly approached his agents and offered to pay them to work for the United States. They publicly exposed the names of his commercial intermediaries and bankers. All this took a terrible toll. As Clarridge later described it in his memoir, A Spy for All Seasons:

"Those who reported having been approached by us were not rewarded for their loyalty, because Abu Nidal never quite believed that anyone in his group had turned us down. Their loyalty was suspect thereafter, and the punishment for disloyalty was torture and death."

By 1987, a fearful Abu Nidal had turned his terror campaign inward...Accused followers were tortured to confess, then executed on the basis of that confession...Over three hundred hard-core operatives were murdered (in Lebanon) on Abu Nidal's order. On a single night in November 1987, approximately 170 were tied up and blindfolded, machine-gunned, and pushed into a trench prepared for the occasion. Another 160 or so were killed in Libya shortly thereafter...Abu Nidal's paranoia, fed by our crusade against him, caused him to destroy his organization.

Those gunned down got merciful deaths compared to those who were subjected to the ghastly tortures of Abu Nidal. Victims were routinely buried alive, fed through a tube lodged in their mouths, and finally executed by a single bullet fired through the feeding tube. Still others had their sexual organs placed in skillets full of boiling oil.

Even afterwards, Abu Nidal remained a force to be reckoned with -- his organization reached as far as the United States. His American sleeper network was discovered by the CIA and put under round-the-clock surveillance by the FBI. It surfaced in one of the most spectacular events of the late Eighties. One of Nidal's agents was a Palestinian who had moved from the West Bank to St. Louis, Missouri, where he raised three daughters. Having grown up in the United States, the girls had the usual headstrong independence of young American women, and often rebelled against their severe father. One of them started dating a black man, which drove her father into a frenzy, and one night he stabbed her to death. The entire scene was recorded by FBI bugging devices, and the tape was presented to local prosecutors. This exposed (and thereby wrecked) the FBI operation and documented the presence of the Abu Nidal Organization in the United States.

In the Nineties, plagued by poor health and operationally weakened by his suicidal actions against his own organization, Abu Nidal became a secondary figure in the Olympus of international terror. But he remained a player nonetheless, and toward the end of the decade he settled down in Baghdad, where he had maintained close ties with the Iraqi intelligence service since the early 1970s. American intelligence analysts trying to fit together the pieces of the terror network, kept running into the Abu Nidal Organization at crucial linkage points, such as the notorious Palestinian camps in Lebanon, from the Nahr al-Barel camp in Tripoli, to Ein al-Hilweh in Sidon. These camps have long been used for training and planning meetings among the leading terrorist groups, from Islamic Jihad to Hezbollah and, more recently al Qaeda (after the debacle in Afghanistan, many al Qaeda terrorists and leaders relocated to Lebanon, thanks in part to Hezbollah).

It may well be that the Abu Nidal Organization still serves as a significant hub for the terrorist groups, and as a conduit between the terrorist groups and Saddam's intelligence apparatus in Baghdad. There is one suggestive link to the September 11 attacks, for one of the suicide terrorists -- Ziyad Samir Al-Jarrah -- lived for five years in Germany with a relative named Assem Al-Jarrah. Assem suddenly left Germany two months before September 11, and it seems that he had long served as a STASI agent, liaising with the Abu Nidal Organization. To date, Assem has not been found, despite international efforts to locate him.

The odds are that we will not know anything approaching the full role of Abu Nidal until after we have won the war against the terror masters, and even then some details will undoubtedly remain unknown. Even his death was typically mysterious. According to the Associated Press, Nidal's body was found in his Baghdad home with several bullet wounds.

Early accounts suggested he had committed suicide, but apparently the notion that he had missed several times, and just kept blasting away at his body until he hit a vital point was too fanciful even for the Middle East.

But we do know something else about Abu Nidal, which we will do well to remember as we grapple with prospects for a Middle East "peace." Although he was universally considered to be a mortal enemy of Yasser Arafat (Fatah passed a death sentence on him in the Seventies), there is good reason to believe that this was a monumental deception. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former acting chief of the Romanian intelligence service during Ceausescu's dictatorship, the Abu Nidal Organization was actually created by Arafat with a double purpose. On the one hand, it enabled Arafat to pose as a moderate, compared to the violent acts carried out by Abu Nidal. On the other, it provided Arafat with a band of assassins that could eliminate any PLO leader that met with Arafat's disapproval. Pacepa has proved to be an extremely accurate source of information ever since he defected to the West in 1978, and he says that the information about Abu Nidal comes straight from Arafat himself during a conversation with Ceausescu.

The secret alliance between Arafat and Abu Nidal reminds us that there is no such thing as a "moderate" leader of a terrorist organization, and that we cannot expect to win the war against terror until the entire network -- starting with the regimes of the terror states and finishing with the tens of thousands of trained killers -- has been brought to justice.

Faster, please.

JWR contributor Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of, most recently, The War Against the Terror Masters.

© Jewish World Review August 21, 2002 / 13 Elul, 5762

Paying for Terrorism

by Rachel Ehrenfeld
 

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has systemically diverted funds donated for the development of the Palestinian state to fund terrorism. "Where is the Money Going?" an independent study by the New York-based Center for the Study of Corruption and the Rule of Law, to be released in Brussels today by B'nai Brith Europe, documents how this diversion works.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the international community has donated approximately $5 billion to the Palestinian Authority. The European Union alone has donated approximately euro1.4 billion during that time, including grants to United Nations Relief and Work Agency. Since the start of the Palestinian Authority's campaign of violence against Israel in September 2000, the EU has transferred at least euro330 million to the Palestinian territories.

The ways in which the EU aid was disbursed by the PA is critical. The EU insists that its aid is subject to extremely stringent conditions. On June 19, External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten told the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee that he takes "any allegation regarding misuse of funds extremely seriously." Mr. Patten also maintained that "EU assistance has clear conditions attached to it and is closely monitored. In order to avoid any risk of possible misuse the monthly payments are monitored by the IMF at the Commission's request."

That last part at least has been thrown into doubt by a representative of the International Monetary Fund -- upon whom the EU relies to monitor the aid it gives and who stated categorically on April 8, at an IMF staff meeting, "The IMF does not monitor foreign assistance to the Palestinian Authority. It simply provides the EU with information about broad developments related to its budget. It does not monitor or control every item in the budget."

As the report we're releasing today, and which I authored, makes clear, PA documents themselves make clear that diversion takes place. Specifically, on Sept. 19, 2001 Arafat approved the payment of $600 to known terrorists, such as Ziad Muhammad Da'as, who commanded the Jan. 18 murderous attack during the Bat-Mitzvah party in Hadera. Another $2,500 was allocated to Hussein Al-Sheikh, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank to pay three Fatah/Tanzim members also involved in the Hadera murders.

Another PA document shows Arafat's comments on the margins of a Nov. 7 PA request allocating $350 dollars each to 24 Fatah members, including Atef Abayat, who headed the main terrorist cell in the Bethlehem area. Not only did Arafat fund Abayat's terrorism, but following his death, Arafat authorized a payment of $800 to his family.

Overall, the report shows there's little reason to believe that Arafat would have changed his position on monitoring from the one he set out in 1994. "I refused and I will never accept!" Arafat said then of conditions imposed for economic aid. "I completely refuse any controls by anybody on the Palestinian Autonomy, except the Palestinians themselves. We didn't finish military occupation to get economic occupation."

Since April 2001, the Arab states have been transferring $45 million a month to the PA, raising their contribution to $55 million per month in April 2002. The EU contribution seems paltry by comparison, but it is still hefty at euro10 million a month since June 2001 to cover PA salary expenses.

The PA gets around regulations by maintaining a double reporting system for its salaries. It also performs exchange rate fraud and keeps the difference. Even when EU money does go directly to pay for PA salaries, the PA deducts a "Fatah membership fee" of between 1.5% and 2% of salaries paid to its security forces. Let's not forget that the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Tanzim are part of Fatah. The PA recruits and employs Fatah activists, including al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Tanzim members.

The EU denies especially this last part, claiming "there is no evidence that any person involved in terror attacks has actually been recruited into the PA security services." Yet, documents from the PA itself show that it pays $640,000 to $1 million per month in salaries to Fatah terrorists.

The PA documents identify some of them by name. There is a Jan. 20 letter by Marwan Barghouti, the former head of Fatah/Tanzim, and an April 5, 2001 letter by Fa'ak Kana'an, Head of Fatah in Tulkarm, requesting that Arafat approve putting Fatah activists and other persons known to be involved in terrorism on the PA security apparatus payroll, and to reward them for their attacks on Israelis. These letters are addressed to Arafat, and include his approval and his comments in his own handwriting.

Despite all the evidence, the EU seems to argue that it will only accept that euros fund terrorism if there are mechanisms to identify how each individual euro is spent. But money is fungible, and since the EU gave direct funding toward PA salaries, the EU is responsible for the money that the PA allocated to fund terrorism.

In light of this overwhelming evidence, there is currently an initiative in the European Parliament to form a committee of inquiry into EU aid to the PA. The proposal has not received enough signatures to go into effect. Only time will tell if the European Parliament as a whole will acknowledge the strong evidence of serious violations of EU law and misuse of European tax payers' money.
 

Ms. Ehrenfeld is the director of the New York-based Center for the Study of Corruption and the Rule of Law, and the author of the forthcoming book, "Funding Evil."  

ONE MAN'S TERRORIST 

By David Parsons 
 

Kibbutz Metzer is a dovish Jewish community located just inside Israel along the old 1949 armistice line with Judea/Samaria, north of Tulkarm. Even as a Fatah gunman slipped into the kibbutz late that evening on his deadly mission, the European Union was co-sponsoring talks in Cairo between the two main rival Palestinian factions - Fatah and Hamas - in hopes of securing a timeout in suicide attacks inside Israel.

Many Israelis share a sense that the EU, by coordinating the talks alongside Egypt, has impliedly adopted the position now espoused by some Fatah leaders that attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the territories are legitimate acts against "occupation," while suicide missions targeting civilians inside Israel are harming Palestinian national interests at the moment.

Worried that it might be giving the wrong impression, the EU dispatched special Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos on Tuesday to lay a wreath at the funeral for the mother and two sons slain in the Kibbutz Metzer attack. Would he have done the same if the family had been from the nearby settlement of Hermesh?

Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is reported to have ordered up an investigation of the incident, with Palestinian Authority officials already suggesting the Fatah militiaman made a "mistake" in thinking the kibbutz was located over the Green Line.

At the same time, Arafat's official radio broadcasts reported that five "colonists" had been killed in an "armed attack on the colony of Metzer." That very day, the unsuccessful attempt by two suicide bombers to infiltrate Israel near the same kibbutz was reported as a "heroic martyrdom operation."

It is also worth recalling that the last time Fatah and Hamas reached an "understanding" on how to unite in the struggle against Israel, it was in Cairo as well, in late 1995. That unwritten agreement created a division of labor between the two factions, with Fatah and the PA pursuing diplomatic gains through Oslo, while Hamas was given the green light to continue their terror campaign, so long as it did not "embarrass" the PA. Thus, for a short
while, suicide bombers were recruited from Arab villages still under Israeli security control and few claims of responsibility were issued for attacks.

Nonetheless, the Europeans are investing much time and energy in trying to secure from these same gangsters a temporary pan-Palestinian truce that would still allow for the murder of any Jew caught in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

This shameful attitude towards the value of Israeli lives was also reflected in the recent rejection by EU Commissioner Chris Patten of a parliamentarian's request that he launch an official probe into persistent reports that EU funding to the PA has been diverted for terrorist purposes. Patten insisted he needed such an investigation "like a hole in the head."

Israelis have reason to bristle not only at these abysmal European stands, but also at the double standard imposed by the US in conducting the war on terrorism. According to various Bush Administration officials, America can launch pre-emptive air strikes on al-Qaida operatives in the Yemeni outback, but it is "unhelpful" if Israel does the same to ruthless Palestinian killers planning more carnage.

No less than US Secretary of State Colin Powell explained the difference over the weekend; asked by CNN whether the US still opposes Israel's targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists following the recent CIA rocketing of the al-Qaida cell in Yemen, Powell responded, "We believe that there are significant differences. This was a case of clearly somebody engaged in a direct conflict with the United States."

This is the same Powell who, testifying last year before a congressional panel on US policy towards the armed intifada, embraced the perverse adage that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

In comparison to Israel's reserved response to such diplomatic drivel, it is interesting to observe the way Russian President Vladimir Putin has just gone ballistic at similar Western suggestions he should go easy on Chechen terrorists. During the just-completed EU-Russia summit, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the conflict in Chechnya could not "be regarded only as a terrorist problem." When a journalist later questioned the Kremlin's crackdown in Chechnya at an end-of-summit press conference, Putin boiled over.

"If you want to become an Islamic radical and have yourself circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow," blurted out Putin.

"They talk about setting up a worldwide Caliphate and the need to kill Americans and their allies," Putin continued. "They talk about the need to kill all ... non-Muslims, or 'Crusaders,' as they put it. If you are a Christian, you are in danger..."

The fuming Russian leader added these "so-called freedom fighters" could threaten to "capture our nuclear facilities or other vital or publicly dangerous facilities... I believe either we are together treating such activities or we are in for big trouble."

Beyond the blunt rhetoric, Putin showed no mercy in the recent storming of the Moscow theatre held by Chechen rebels. Reports also indicate that the Chechen home of one of the female suicide bombers inside the theater has been demolished. Russia learned this effective counter-terrorism measure from Israel, who learned it from the British.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was equally blunt when he visited Kibbutz Metzer soon after the recent shooting spree. "The terrorism [that we face] does not distinguish between children, women, men, settlers, soldiers - it makes no differentiation. It discerns only one thing: Who is a Jew for it to kill."

When it comes to jihad terrorists, Islamic suicide bombers and their quest for weapons of mass destruction, it is time for the US and Europe to realize that one man's terrorist is every man's terrorist!