Newsweek's Reminder: Al Qaeda Financier Had Ties to Saddam Hussein
By Andrew Cochran
As Doug Farah and Victor Comras discussed yesterday, the Al Taqwa organization was heavily involved in funding Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups. Newsweek's story on the Al Taqwa case discusses ties between Youssef Nada, founder and head of Al Taqwa, and Saddam Hussein. The ties are evidenced by the Decmber 2002 letter from then-Treasury Deputy General Counsel George Wolfe to Swiss authorities and then supported in a call from Nada to Newsweek. Newsweek: "The letter also noted that Nada had "personal ties" with Saddam Hussein...He acknowledged that he did go to Baghdad before the first gulf war to try unsuccessfully to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait and that investigators had removed a picture of him meeting Saddam from his residence when their raided him in 2001."(sic) The photo of Nada and Saddam is posted on the Newsweek site. Whether these "ties" resulted in any money changing hands from Saddam's regime to Nada and Al Taqwa, and ultimately to Al Qaeda and other groups, is the mega-question that can't be answered in the article. We already know that Al Taqwa was part of the network of players in the Oil-for-Food scandal.
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