Translated material
Alms for a terrorist
But what does charity have to do with it? Despite the fact that a significant part of the funds goes to terrorists through charity channels. Thus, during searches in the caches and safe houses of the terrorists of the Jihad Base on the Arabian Peninsula, donation boxes with the logos of well-known Islamic charitable foundations were discovered.
Saudi Arabia and a number of allied regimes have been carefully building a powerful system for financing extremist and terrorist activity around the world for a long time. This system is led by the Saudi League of Islamic Peace (LIM), whose main task is to work with Muslims in non-Muslim states. In the political structure of the Saudi state, LIM is both the second Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an analogue of the international department of the CPSU Central Committee in the Soviet Union. LIM workers and emissaries are part of the staff of the Islamic departments of the embassies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in different countries of the world. The Islamic World League coordinates and directs the activities of approximately 6 thousand Islamic charitable foundations and their branches in at least 55 countries.
But this is a kind of “lizard’s tail,” which is why the leaders of Western countries made attempts to come to an agreement with the “lizard” itself. In November 1994, during a period of rapid growth of Islamist terrorism in France, then French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua paid a visit to Saudi Arabia. He publicly admitted that the main goal of the negotiations was to convince the kingdom's leadership to influence LIM, forcing it to stop sponsoring Islamists in France.
How does the accumulation of funds (fundraising) take place in Islamic charitable foundations? Primarily through zakat, a tax on Muslims intended to support those in need. The foundations themselves do not have the right to collect zakat; this is done by government agencies of Islamic states, which then transfer these funds to the accounts of charitable foundations. Significant sums come from donors as sadaqa (alms). Sadaka is collected wherever there are Muslim communities and mosques. In addition, the funds implement economic projects.
The fundraising system for Muslims developed on American soil during the Cold War - it was then that the collection of funds for terrorist organizations and terrorist activities of Islamists began. It was only assumed that this would be a jihad against the USSR, which invaded Afghanistan, and not against America, and certainly not against the Saudi royal family.
The first task of Islamic charities is charitable assistance. However, the head of French counterintelligence, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, spoke about this in 2002: “The problem with them is that the NGOs [numerous Saudi and other Arabian non-governmental organizations] that finance al-Qaeda sometimes actually carry out charitable activities "
In February 2003, the Lebanese TV channel Al-Mustaqbal broadcast an interview with the former Kuwaiti Minister of Information and Minister of Oil Saud Nasser al-Sabah, in which he extremely strongly protested against the intervention of Islamist organizations with the status of charitable or humanitarian (he counted more than a hundred of them in Kuwait ), into the political life of the country, and also accused them of terrorism.
Islamic charities have directly financed terrorist and extremist groups in various countries. After September 11, 2001, the National Commission to Investigate the Terrorist Attacks on the United States stated: "Al-Qaeda received ... money from certain corrupt charities." The commission's report names two types of such organizations (funds): in some, people sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, taking advantage of the lack of strict control, pumped money into this organization (for example, the Al-Haramain Foundation with its numerous branches), in In others, employees directly controlled accounts and purposefully transferred money to al-Qaeda (the Al-Wafa Foundation is cited as an example).
The Association of Victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and their relatives filed a $116 trillion lawsuit against government agencies of Saudi Arabia and individual government officials in the kingdom, as well as a number of Islamic charitable foundations, accusing them of financing terrorists.
After September 11, American authorities began to deal with Islamic charities that collected money in the United States. Thus, four offices of the charitable organization “Holy Land” were seized, which, according to the US President, financed the Hamas group in Palestine. Searches and arrests were carried out at the offices of the Islamic charitable foundation “Global Rescue Fund” (in fact, a branch of the largest Saudi “double-acting” charity organization “An-Najda”).
In Russia, Islamic charitable foundations were actively involved in financing terrorist and subversive activities. Since the second half of the 90s of the last century, money for militants and terrorists operating in the North Caucasus has come from the Kuwaiti Society for Social Reform, the Kuwait Association for the Resurrection of Islamic Heritage, the Qatari charitable society "Qatar", the Saudi International Islamic Salvation Organization and many others.
The list “Foreign Mercenaries Killed in Chechnya” published in September 2002 contains many individuals who entered Russian territory under the guise of Islamic charitable foundations.
Instead of a conclusion
In August 2006, a large-scale terrorist attack that could have been compared to the September 11 attacks was prevented in the UK. As it turned out, the preparation of this terrorist attack was carried out with money that came from Great Britain to Pakistan to help victims of the earthquake. Almost $10 million was sent, less than half of this amount went to charitable needs.