A UN-backed report says several top al-Qaeda operatives laundered millions of dollars in African diamonds before the terrorist attacks on New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
The UN team interviewed witnesses who said as many as six senior al-Qaeda fugitives were involved in the laundering scheme. From 1999 onward, al-Qaeda figures dealt directly with Liberia’s then-president Charles Taylor and other warlords in the West African country. The witnesses spoke of meetings in sleazy hotels and safehouses in the capital city of Monrovia.
The diamonds provided untraceable funds after the U.S. froze al-Qaeda bank accounts and other worldwide assets in 1999.
The report was prepared by UN-backed investigators for a recent presentation to the Sept. 11 commission and other officials in Washington, D.C.
“It is clear al-Qaeda has been in West Africa since September 1998 and maintained a continuous presence in the area through 2002,” the UN-backed war-crimes investigators said in the report obtained by the Associated Press.
The report estimates al-Qaeda proceeds from diamond dealings at US$15 million.
The roster of al-Qaeda fugitives allegedly witnessed in Liberia ahead of Sept. 11, 2001, included Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and arrested July 25 in Pakistan, and Egyptian Mohammed Atef, an alleged Osama bin Laden military chief, killed in Afghanistan in 2001.
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