Tobacco Distributors … Terrorists may get money from regional, cheap cigarette smuggling ring (UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013) …item 2.. Military expert: Boston bombing ‘not an anomaly’ (May 19, 2013) …
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Three of those charged in the sophisticated conspiracy were linked to known terrorists, including Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip and has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, officials said.
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…..item 1)…. Terrorists may get money from regional, cheap cigarette smuggling ring: Ray Kelly …
… New York Daily News … www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ …
New York
Some of those arrested in the federal bust have links to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, and Rashid Baz, who opened fire on a van of Yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing Ari Halberstam. ‘We’re concerned because similar schemes have been used in the past to help fund terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah,’ says Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
By Greg B. Smith AND Oren Yaniv / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2013, 3:41 PM
UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013, 4:03 AM
www.nydailynews.com/new-york/terrorists-money-regional-ci…
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img code photo … OPERATION TOBACCO ROAD
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Office of the Attorney General; New York Daily News
A diagram shows the hierarchy of the scheme and those arrested.
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Where’s the money?
Federal authorities Thursday scrambled to find millions of dollars in profits a smuggling ring that sold cheap cigarettes to bodegas across New York may have used to fund terrorism in the Middle East.
Three of those charged in the sophisticated conspiracy were linked to known terrorists, including Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip and has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, officials said.
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img code photo … In total 16 people, all Palestinian nationals
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JEFFERSON SIEGEL
In total 16 people, all Palestinian nationals, were charged in the operation.
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“We’ve only recovered a small fraction of the money,” said state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in announcing enterprise corruption charges against 16 defendants. “We’re very seriously concerned about where that money went.”
Over the last 17 months, authorities say the ring bought million worth of cigarettes in Virginia, trucked it to New York and sold packs tax-free to small stores across Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.
By selling the packs cheap, they cheated the state out of million in taxes and dramatically increased their take, authorities said.
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img code photo … cigarettes
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SUSAN WATTS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Cartons were taken by the truckload from Virginia to New York and Jersey.
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Investigators in the case, dubbed Operation Tobacco Road, have so far found evidence the group pocketed million in profits, of which authorities have found only .8 million in cash and bank accounts.
RELATED: ARRESTED CIGARETTE SMUGGLER LINKED TO 1994 MURDER OF YESHIVA STUDENT
“While it hasn’t been established yet where the illicit proceeds ended up, we’re concerned because similar schemes have been used in the past to help fund terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
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img code photo … OPERATION TOBACCO ROAD
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OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Dealers take advantage of differences in taxes in Virginia, where they are 30 cents per pack, compared with .85 per pack in New York City.
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All 16 of those charged are Palestinian and all but two were living illegally in the U.S. One managed to flee to Jordan before the arrests late Wednesday.
Kelly said the group included several “individuals on our radar with links to known terrorists,” starting with Mohannad Seif, 39, a cigarette reseller from Brooklyn.
Kelly said Seif lived in the same three-story walkup with the personal secretary of Hamas’ main fund-raiser in the U.S., Mousa Abu Marzouk, who was deported from the U.S. in 1997. Marzouk continues to raise money for Hamas in Egypt.
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img code photo … Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman
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SUSAN WATTS
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is jailed in Missouri for a 1993 bomb plot against city landmarks.
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The NYPD also linked Muaffaq Askar, 46, a reseller in Brooklyn, to the Arab gunman who shot up a van full of yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994. The gunman, Rashid Baz, killed 16-year-old passenger Ari Halberstam.
At the time, Baz claimed it was a case of road rage, but the incident has since been recategorized as a terrorist hit. On Thursday, Kelly said the Halberstam murder was “still open.”
He revealed Askar was a “confidant” of Baz who considered Askar his “Palestinian uncle.”
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img code photo … profits may have funded terror groups
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SAID KHATIB / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
Authorities fear profits may have funded terror groups.
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RELATED: FBI SEEKS WARRANT TO ID SOURCE OF FRESH DEATH THREAT TIED TO ’94 BROOKLYN BRIDGE ATTACK
Defendant Youssef Odeh, 52, of Staten Island, had financial ties to the imprisoned blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted in a 1993 plot to blow up New York landmarks, Kelly said.
Before he got into the cigarette business, Odeh sold baby formula. In the early 1990s, the sheik invested ,000 in Odeh’s business, Kelly said.
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img code photo … Top cop Raymond Kelly
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SUSAN WATTS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Top cop Raymond Kelly (center) and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman detail the takedown.
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That transaction was arranged by Rahman’s then-spokesman, Ahmed Sattar, whom Kelly identified as a close friend of Askar.
Sattar was convicted in 2005 of smuggling out of prison what prosecutors described as “words of hate” from Rahman to the world, including a fatwa to “kill (Jews) wherever they are.”
Before his arrest, Sattar — who likely believed he was under surveillance — made calls overseas on Odeh’s cell phone.
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img code photo … Police Commissioner Ray Kelly
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SUSAN WATTS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks at a press conference as Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (right) listens.
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If the ring is funding terrorism, it picked a highly lucrative business to do so, authorities said. As one defendant caught on tape stated, “This business is better than selling drugs.”
The accused ringleaders, brothers Basel and Samir Ramadan of Ocean City, Md., bought cigarettes from a Virginia wholesaler, Cooper Booth Wholesale Inc., which shipped them to a public storage facility in Delaware, prosecutors said.
RELATED: SEEK 9/11 AID FOR ’94 SLAY BROOKLYN BRIDGE KILLING FITS TERROR CRITERIA, SCHUMER SAYS
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img code photo … All are being held without bail
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JEFFERSON SIEGEL
All are being held without bail and could get from eight to 25 years in state prison if convicted.
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Cooper Booth President Barry Margolis did not return calls seeking comment.
A portion of the profit was based on the difference in cigarette taxes in Virginia, where they are 30 cents per pack, and New York, where they are .85 per pack.
The Ramadans purchased their cigarettes for per carton and sold to their distributors for a carton. They, in turn, sold to bodegas for a carton — a huge discount from the usual 0 cost per carton, which includes taxes.
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img code photo … The gang allegedly bought cigarettes from Cooper Booth Wholesale Inc., a wholesaler in Virginia
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JEFFERSON SIEGEL
The gang allegedly bought cigarettes from Cooper Booth Wholesale Inc., a wholesaler in Virginia, and then would drive them to New York for illegal sales, say authorities.
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The brothers paid the Virginia tax with the promise that they’d sell only in Virginia, but instead shipped their wares to New York. They affixed fake tax stamps to the packs but sold them to distributors tax-free — greatly reducing the normal New York price of per pack.
Several times a week, Adel Abuzahrieh, 42, of Brooklyn, drove a white box truck covered in graffiti from New York to meet the brothers in Delaware, authorities said.
He’d drop off black garbage bags filled with cash and leave with thousands of cartons of cigarettes — up to 20,000 a week, prosecutors say. The brothers would show up at small local banks with beer coolers filled with cash to deposit.
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img code photo … The alleged accomplices
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JEFFERSON SIEGEL
The alleged accomplices have been under surveillance by the state Organized Crime Task Force and NYPD for months.
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Abuzahrieh always took the same return route and met distributors in parking lots behind malls and Home Depots. Distributors loaded boxes of cartons into car trunks, then began the process of selling them directly to bodegas or to resellers, who’d do the same.
The untaxed packs were offered to smokers at a discount at Arab markets and grocery stores in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and the Bronx.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn Supreme on Thursday and were held on bails ranging from ,000 to 0,000.
Lamis Dee, a lawyer for Odeh and two other defendants, brought up recent accusations about the NYPD spying on Muslims and claimed Kelly was blowing a “simple untaxed cigarette case” into something it’s not.
gsmith@nydailynews.com and oyaniv@nydailynews.com
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…..item 2)…. Military expert: Boston bombing ‘not an anomaly’ …
… Florida Today … www.floridatoday.com/ …
May 19, 2013 |
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img code photo … An Army team transfers the remains of Spc. Thomas P. Murach on May 7 at Dover Air Force Base, Del.
www.gannett-cdn.com/media/USATODAY/USATODAY/2013/05/16/13…
An Army team transfers the remains of Spc. Thomas P. Murach on May 7 at Dover Air Force Base, Del. Murach, 22, of Meridian, Idaho, died of injuries sustained when an IED struck his vehicle in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. / Steve Ruark, AP
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by Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
FILED UNDER
USA Today News
USA Today World
www.floridatoday.com/usatoday/article/2166011
WASHINGTON – The threat from homemade bombs – the top killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq – will persist for decades and likely become a more prevalent menace domestically, according to the former top Pentagon officer charged with fighting improvised explosive devices.
Michael Barbero, an Army lieutenant general who retired Friday, talked about IEDs and the threat they pose to U.S. citizens and their toll in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere in a recent interview.
"This is here to stay," said Barbero, who led the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). "It’s too cheap, too readily available, a whole generation of bombmakers. Boston is not an anomaly."
The homemade bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon killed three people and wounded more than 260 others, many of whom had limbs severed by the shrapnel of bombs cobbled together with pressure cookers and nails.
The United States ranks in the top five among countries reporting IED attacks, Barbero said. Most of the domestic attacks involve pipe bombs on timers, he said. The attempted attack on New York’s Times Square in 2010 involved a vehicleNissan Pathfinder filled with propane, gasoline and fertilizer. Passers-by alerted police, and the bomb failed to explode. Faisal Shahzad is serving a life sentence for the attempted attack.
"We were lucky," Barbero said. "A couple hundred pounds in the middle of Times Square? Very bad, very bad. But he screwed up the fusing, and we had good police work."
The best way to fight the IED threat is to trace bombmaking networks to IEDs through forensic evidence such as fingerprints and DNA, Barbero said. He worries that lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan will be lost if JIEDDO is allowed to wither.
"I’m concerned that’s not sufficiently funded. Basic forensics, labs – that’s a game-changer at the tactical level," he said.
JIEDDO analysts helped examine the Boston bombs, Barbero said. The organization also probes social networks – the command-and-control vehicle for bombmaking networks.
Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, said Barbero’s concern about the long-term threat of IEDs is on target. "Unfortunately, the past data and likely future trends show that IEDs are here to stay, both on battlefields abroad and in terror cases at home," he said.
Capabilities that JIEDDO has will continue to be in demand. Officials will have to decide if JIEDDO remains in place or its expertise is parceled out to other parts of government, Singer said.
Elsewhere, IEDs continue to kill and maim:
— â?¢ Afghanistan. A homemade bomb killed five U.S. soldiers May 4 in a Stryker combat vehicle. The bomb was big, "a couple hundred pounds," and well placed, Barbero said. "Smart enemy," he said. "They know capabilities we have."
— â?¢ Syria. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has shared IED tactics with fighters in Syria, Barbero said. Other terrorist groups are spreading bomb-making materials and techniques with militants in North Africa. "As I look at every global hot spot, it is the weapon of choice," Barbero said. "In Syria we should not be surprised."
— â?¢ Pakistan. Efforts to stem the flow of fertilizer – the main ingredient in homemade explosives used in Afghanistan – have started to pay off, Barbero said. Last April, 86% of IEDs in Afghanistan used homemade explosives, almost all of which could be traced to plants in Pakistan. That has dropped to 80% this year, according to JIEDDO. He credited better relations with the Pakistani military.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Military expert: Boston bombing ‘not an anomaly’
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