Evil Plus Evil

By Bill West

The Chief Prosecutor and Chief Investigator for the UN�backed special war crimes court in Sierra Leone have declared they have evidence that former Liberian dictator Charles Ghankay Taylor, who is wanted by that tribunal for crimes against humanity, has been and continues to be involved with al-Qaeda. That in itself is cause for alarm, but past and current immigration enforcement projects have demonstrated that foreign war criminals and persecutors have made their way to the US. If this "special" class of international criminal is now finding alliance with terrorists, we need to pay special attention.

A report in today�s Voice of America News.Com, posted on the CT Blog News Column,
notes that Taylor�s involvement with al-Qaeda even included providing safe haven for some of the terrorists involved in the bombing attacks against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

CT Blog contributing expert Doug Farah has written extensively on Taylor�s suspected involvement in human rights persecution and war crimes. Taylor stands indicted by the UN Special Court since 2003 and is the subject of an INTERPOL fugitive notice, notwithstanding his having been granted asylum in Nigeria.

The UN prosecution team, which has been pursuing the Taylor case for several years, claims to have credible evidence of Taylor�s linkage to al-Qaeda. Presumably that evidence will be shared with Western Intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It would appear a modern-day war crimes suspect might have found alliance with one of the world�s most dangerous radical Islamic terror organizations. Evil plus evil equals serious problems for the good guys.

In early 2000, while a Supervisory Special Agent with the INS Investigations Division in Miami, I started what was then the first-ever human-rights persecutor apprehension program. This small but energetic effort targeted aliens within south Florida who were identified as having committed human rights abuses or war crimes in their home countries and who had come to the US, either legally or illegally. We pursued investigations against these people and determined they ultimately violated US immigration and nationality law and then prosecuted them for those violations, resulting in criminal convictions and/or deportation. By my retirement in 2003, the program had netted 46 arrests and led to what became a national program with ICE called Operation No Safe Haven targeting such predators nationwide and seeking to keep them from entering the US in the first place.

What the Miami project and Operation No Safe Haven demonstrated is that foreign officials at all levels who engage in these atrocities and then become deposed will frequently try to find their way to the US, and often succeed. A revision of the Immigration and Nationality Act last year under the Intelligence Reform Bill strengthened the law against human rights persecutors and war criminals, but investigative and prosecution vigilance and appropriate resources must be maintained, lest the likes of Charles Taylor and his alliance with al-Qaeda find their way to our shores. Doug Farah has argued strongly for bringing Charles Taylor to justice. This latest revelation is all the more reason to do so.

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