According to a UN investigation, jihadist groups in Africa have set up a new means of financing their terrorist activities through the trafficking of fake medicines. Mali is designated as the main hub of this juicy traffic.
According to a UN report, ISIS still has an estimated $30-45 million war chest. The report states that this is mainly cash, but notes that some of it has been converted into investments, via nominees, in Iraq, Syria and especially Turkey.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently wrote to the European Union member states to ask them for more financial commitments in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel.
Identifying the most crucial French intelligence issues and proposing a new way of operating and coordinating the efforts of the French intelligence community is at the heart of the national intelligence strategy developed this summer by the National Coordination for Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (in French: Coordination Nationale du Renseignement et de la Lutte contre le Terrorisme – CNRLT).
The deadly attack on October 3 at the very heart of the intelligence directorate, at the Paris police prefecture, illustrated in the most dramatic way the phenomenon we mentioned in the first of this series of articles devoted to the new anti-terrorist challenges. Namely, this type of terrorist acts is no longer the work of commandos attacking France from the fiefdoms of ISIS in Iraqi-Syrian jihadist areas, but is the poisoned fruit of spontaneous “jihadist vocations”, generated at a distance, by recruiters of ISIS, among French “subjects” most often motivated by violent nihilistic impulses, more than by a real desire for a jihadist “holy war”.
This summer 2019 will have been the season of all extremes for Qatar.
It all began on June 20, with an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealing that one of Al-Qaeda’s most famous silversmiths, Khalifa al-Subaiy, who was notably the financier of the “September 11 brain”, continues to carry out his activities as a “patron of terror”, protected from the high protections he enjoys within the Qatari establishment.
Then the scandals broke out.
Despite the denials of the Qatari authorities, which are trying to deny any involvement in the financing of terrorism, scandals have multiplied, and revelations have followed one another since the beginning of the summer, bringing a surprising amount of documents and evidence that overwhelm the gas emirate. Revelations that splash on many local businessmen and dignitaries, but also prominent members of the princely family, including Fahad bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, one of the brothers of the current Amir, Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and former Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, close advisor and business associate of former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani….
For a long time, the Doha authorities’ defence strategy, faced with increasing revelations about the involvement of many Qatari dignitaries in terrorist financing scandals, has been to describe them as individual initiatives that do not represent the government.
For years – and until recently – a good half a dozen Qatari individuals were funding al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria or the Shebab in Somalia. For the purposes of our investigation, on the book published with my colleague Christian Chesnot (Nos très chers émirs, sont-ils vraiment nos amis), we met in 2016 one of these terrorist financiers, Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman bin Omer al-Nuaimi in Doha, who has been on the European Union and United States black lists since 2014.
Apart from belonging to radical Islamist ideology, what is the common link between Al-Qaeda and Daesh, even though they are rivals? And the one between the brain behind the 11 September attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the ‘star’ preacher of the Al-Jazeera chain, Youssef Al-Qaradawi? And a myriad of pro-Islamic networks of influence and funding, established both in the Arab world and in the great capital cities of the West?
The answer is unequivocal: the pan-Islamic Fraternity of the Muslim Brotherhood! This emerges from a very detailed study titled ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to Extremists’ produced by the US think-tank Counter Extremism Project.
