Al Qaeda Cash Tied to Diamond Trade
Sale of Gems From Sierra Leone Rebels Raised Millions, Sources Say

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 2, 2001; Page A01

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, Nov. 1 -- The terrorist network led by Osama bin
Laden has reaped millions of dollars in the past three years from the
illicit sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone, according to U.S.
and European intelligence officials and two sources with direct knowledge of
events.
Diamond dealers working directly with men named by the FBI as key operatives
in bin Laden's al Qaeda network bought gems from the rebels at below-market
prices and sold them for large profits in Europe. Investigators in the
United States and Europe are still trying to determine how much money al
Qaeda derived from its dealings with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF),
but they estimated the amount to be in the millions.
Since July, the sources said, the diamond dealers have changed their
tactics, buying far more diamonds than usual and paying premium prices for
them. Investigators said that is a strong indication that al Qaeda, perhaps
anticipating its accounts would be frozen after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks in the United States, sought to protect its money by sinking it into
gemstones, a commodity that can be easily hidden, holds its value and
remains almost untraceable.
"When prices go up and supply goes up, it means someone is seeking to
launder or hide cash, and we believe that is the case here," a U.S. official
said. "Diamonds don't set off alarms at airports, they can't be sniffed by
dogs, they are easy to hide, and are highly convertible to cash. It makes
perfect sense."
U.S. and European intelligence officials, overwhelmed after Sept. 11 and
with very few agents in West Africa, said they realized only recently how
important the diamond flow was to fund al Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations.
"I now believe that to cut off al Qaeda funds and laundering activities you
have to cut off the diamond pipeline," said a European investigator. "We are
talking about millions and maybe tens of millions of dollars in profits and
laundering."
The Diamond Dealers

The diamonds are mined by RUF rebels, who became infamous during Sierra
Leone's civil war for hacking off the arms and legs of civilians and
abducting thousands of children and forcing them to fight as combatants. The
country's alluvial diamond fields, some of the richest in the world, were
the principal prize in the civil war, and they have been under RUF control
for the past four years.
Small packets of diamonds, often wrapped in rags or plastic sheets, are
taken by senior RUF commanders across the porous Liberian border to
Monrovia, according to sources. There, at a safe house protected by the
Liberian government, the diamonds are exchanged for briefcases of cash
brought by diamond dealers who fly several times a month from Belgium to
Monrovia, where they are escorted by special state security through customs
and immigration control.
The diamond dealers are selected by Ibrahim Bah, a Libyan-trained former
Senegalese rebel and the RUF's principal diamond dealer, the sources said.
The buyers' identities are known only to Bah and a few others.
Bah's contacts and sympathies were forged on the battlefield, according to
intelligence reports and sources who know him well. After fighting with the
Casamance separatist movement in Senegal in the 1970s, Bah trained in Libya
under the protection of Col. Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. Like bin
Laden, he spent several years in the early 1980s fighting alongside Muslim
guerrillas against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Bah then joined the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia to fight Israeli forces
in southern Lebanon before returning to Libya at the end of the 1980s. In
Libya, Bah met and trained several men who would go on to lead rebellions in
West Africa, including Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra
Leone, the RUF's founder. Bah himself later fought in both Liberia and
Sierra Leone.
According to intelligence sources and two people who have worked with him,
Bah now acts as a conduit between senior RUF commanders and the buyers from
both al Qaeda and Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim organization linked to Lebanese
activists who have kidnapped numerous Americans, hijacked airplanes and
carried out car bomb attacks on U.S. installations in Beirut.
Bah, who lives in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, declined through
intermediaries to be interviewed for this article. In the past, he has
refused to talk to U.N. investigators probing the region's
weapons-for-diamonds trade.
Senior RUF officials, who are overseeing the disarmament of the rebel
movement as part of a U.N.-brokered peace agreement, said this week in
response to a query from The Washington Post that they were shocked by
allegations of Bah's dealings with terrorist organizations and would
thoroughly investigate the matter.
Virtually Untraceable Funds

How much money terrorist organizations made in diamond sales brokered by Bah
is difficult to ascertain. A U.N. panel of experts estimated the market
value of RUF "blood diamonds" sold in 1999 at about $75 million. But since
the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF agreed to a cease-fire last year,
diamond mining has greatly accelerated.
Sources in the diamond trade estimate that the RUF receives less than 10
percent of market value for the diamonds it sells, paid mostly in the form
of weapons, food and medicine. Taylor, who is now Liberia's president,
receives a commission on each transaction in Monrovia, and Bah and the other
brokers share the rest, according to sources involved in the dealings.
Taylor repeatedly has denied involvement in illicit diamond dealings.
"Even if only 10 percent went to terrorist organizations, you are talking
about millions of dollars in virtually untraceable funds, every year," said
a European investigator. "That is enough to keep a lot of people going."
European and American intelligence sources have long known that Hezbollah
has raised significant amounts of money in West Africa through the largely
Shiite Muslim Lebanese communities in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burkina
Faso and Togo. There are an estimated 120,000 Lebanese in West Africa,
mostly involved in import-export businesses.
"Hezbollah is active in all these countries and are deeply involved in many
businesses across the region," said one European official tracking the
movement. "It is only a small part of the Lebanese community that is
sympathetic, but many people contribute to them just to keep Hezbollah off
their backs."
For at least 20 years, Hezbollah had also raised some cash through the sale
of diamonds from Sierra Leone, intelligence sources said. Bah, they said,
was long suspected of brokering diamond deals through buyers connected to
Hezbollah, assisted by sympathetic Lebanese businessmen across the region.
After Sept. 11, U.S. officials began focusing more intently on the West
African diamond network. Transcripts from court cases against al Qaeda
members contained evidence that the network has people with expertise in the
diamond business and who previously dabbled in the gemstone trade in
Tanzania.

The connection to al Qaeda was cemented in September 1998, when Bah arranged
for Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah to visit Monrovia, according to two sources.
Abdullah was described on the FBI's recent poster of most wanted terrorists
as a "top bin Laden adviser" who "helped plan a number of Al Qaeda's
attacks."
After spending one night in Monrovia, the sources said, Bah and Abdullah
flew in a Liberian government helicopter to the town of Foya, on the border
with Sierra Leone. There Abdullah met with a senior RUF commander, Sam
Bockerie, better known as Mosquito, to discuss buying diamonds on a regular
basis. The sources said the RUF did not know who Abdullah was but agreed to
do business with him because of Bah's presence.
A few weeks later Bah arranged a visit for two more al Qaeda operatives now
on the FBI list, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the
sources said. Together, they also met Bockerie, taking him $100,000 in cash
and receiving a parcel of diamonds in an introductory deal, the sources
said.
Ghailani, the FBI alleges, is an al Qaeda operative from Tanzania who helped
buy the truck used in the 1998 bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania. Fazul, from the Comoros Islands, is identified by the FBI
as the "head of Al Qaeda's Kenyan cell" who had trained at a bin Laden camp.
A Growing Business

Since the 1998 contact was made, Bah, through several Lebanese businessmen
based in Belgium, has steadily expanded his operations in Monrovia. Sources
identified the key brokers working with Bah as Aziz Nassur and Sammy
Ossailly, two Lebanese diamond dealers based in Antwerp, Belgium.
Nassur did not respond to numerous messages left on his voice mail.
Ossailly's telephone was not in service.
By the summer of 2000, Ossailly had moved to Monrovia, the Liberian capital,
to oversee Bah and Nassur's diamond operation, according to people who knew
them. He stayed until April.
Last January, Bah and the diamond buyers signed a three-year lease on a
four-bedroom house in Monrovia. Ghailani and Fazul, who had left the region,
returned to Liberia, then spent at least two weeks in the Kono mining fields
in Sierra Leone, according to RUF members who identified them from
photographs. They said the two had a satellite telephone they used to talk
to "Alpha Zulu," the code name given to Nassur, according to sources.
Sources said that because Ghailani and Fazul were light-skinned strangers
who spoke little English, and therefore attracted attention, Bah asked
Nassur to send in darker-skinned people, at which time he brought in
Africans from Senegal.
The Senegalese now staff the Monrovia safe house, where they watch videos of
Hezbollah suicide attacks on Israeli troops and have plastered the walls
with pictures of bin Laden and Hezbollah posters, according to two people
who visited the house.
Two sources with direct knowledge of a meeting at the Monrovia safe house in
mid-July said Nassur visited and asked the RUF to step up its mining
activities.
"At the meeting, Aziz Nassur, whom we call Alpha Zulu, asked the RUF to
double its mining production and offered to pay a better price for what we
mined," a source said. "General Bah sent Nassur to Monrovia to meet with us
because he said it was very important."
Nassur, according to the sources, was met at the airport by senior Liberian
security officials and escorted through the VIP lounge without going through
immigration or customs formalities.
Now, said a U.S. investigator, "Antwerp is awash in Sierra Leonean diamonds,
and they are going through Monrovia."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company






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