Al-Farouq

Brooklyn Muslims Financed WTC Attack

Muslims, at the Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, allegedly paid over $20 million to finance the 1993 WTC and September 11 Attacks. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization benefited from the the Al Farooq mosques stateside connection, according to witnesses in federal terrorism trials. If this is true, our Brooklyn Muslim neighbors financed the mass killing of 3000 innocent Americans.

Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad, left, and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, both Yemeni natives, were arrested on Jan. 10, 2003 in Frankfurt, Germany, based on complaints issued in Brooklyn. (Handouts) March 4, 2003

Behind an unassuming facade on bustling Atlantic Avenue, the Al-Farooq mosque was the place where the paths of at least eight young Islamic fundamentalists intersected since the late 1980s, on their way to conducting jihad missions around the world.

It was here, in Downtown Brooklyn on a block of antique shops, stores and restaurants, that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization benefited from a vital stateside connection, according to witnesses in federal terrorism trials.

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the jailed Muslim cleric, served as the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, before he was convicted of inciting followers to carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a separate, foiled plot to bomb New York landmarks.

Three of his mosque followers went on to carry out that first trade center attack. A Sudanese man they met there would later help found al-Qaida with bin Laden. And an Egyptian army officer who frequented the Alkifah refugee center — affiliated with the mosque and at one time located in its basement before moving down the block — would become bin Laden’s head of security.

“The Al-Farooq mosque has been a place that has a rich sort of history to it. It would not at all be impolitic or inaccurate to describe it as a place that has been known to attract people who, at a minimum, not only opposed the United States but picked up arms and tried to do something against this country,” noted Jack Cloonan, a former FBI special agent who investigated the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, tracking down al-Qaida’s backing of those attacks and helping to build the first case in America to charge bin Laden with plotting to kill U.S. citizens. “Unfortunately so many good Muslims get tarnished because of the acts of a few. It’s unfortunate, but it happened.”

In an interview Friday, Cloonan said, “It wasn’t a far leap to go from the mosque to the Alkifah refugee center to a house in Peshawar [Pakistan], and then to Afghanistan and a [terrorist training] camp.”

The mosque slipped quietly back into obscurity after several of Rahman’s followers were convicted in 1995 of a foiled plot to bomb New York bridges and tunnels. Then, suddenly, it was back in the headlines last week when Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged a Yemeni man, Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad, of raising millions for al-Qaida and the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Prosecutors said much of the money came from contributors in the United States, and that al-Moayad had bragged to an informant that money he received for jihad missions was collected at Al-Farooq.

Mosque leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Newsday they will meet with the FBI this week about the case. The FBI declined to comment for this story, as did the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which is prosecuting.

Interviews with law enforcement officials and witnesses in a series of terrorist trials in New York, however, show that the mosque drew a number of young men over the years who shared fundamentalist Islamic views and an animus against the U.S.

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. The most famous of those affiliated with the mosque is Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who preached at the mosque until mosque trustees barred him from preaching in 1991 because of his incendiary speeches.

Jamal al-Fadl. A Sudanese national, al-Fadl helped found al-Qaida. He testified at the 2001 embassy bombings trial that he came to the Al-Farooq mosque in the late 1980s as a student, and there met Mustafa Shalabi, an Egyptian electrician.

Shalabi, he said, was the “emir,” or head, of an Afghan relief effort called the Alkifah refugee center, which was loosely affiliated with the mosque and organized to help the mujahedeen fight the Soviet Union.

Asked by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald at the trial what other activities he participated in at Al-Farooq, al-Fadl replied, “Recruit Muslims to join the group, tell them about the group, tell them come help the group.” Al-Fadl testified that Alkifah operated under an international umbrella organization called “Mektab al Khidmat” or “the services.” As the fight against the Soviets was winding down, al-Fadl traveled to Afghanistan at Shalabi’s urging, to fight with the mujahedeen. There, he met and befriended a young Saudi man who had already gained prominence in the training camps — Osama bin Laden.

About 1989, al-Fadl said, bin Laden decided to begin his own group founded on similar principles as Khidmat — dedicated not to battle the Soviets, but to violently oppose non-Islamic governments.

Al-Fadl testified he was the third person to swear an oath of allegiance to the group and eventually became one of bin Laden’s closest aides. In 1993, he said he attempted to buy uranium for a nuclear weapon that bin Laden was attempting to build.

Three years later, he said, he broke with the group and began cooperating with the U.S. government after stealing about $100,000 from bin Laden’s group. Al-Fadl pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges; prosecutors sealed his sentence, citing national security concerns.

Ali Mohamed. Mohamed was a young Egyptian army officer who found his way to the Al-Farooq mosque in the late 1980s. According to documents and a witness at the 1995 trial of Sheik Rahman, Shalabi invited Mohamed — who joined the U.S. Army in 1986 and was discharged in 1989 — to provide military training in Alkifah’s office, then located in the mosque’s basement.

Three young Muslim men who attended Mohamed’s classes on map reading, wartime survival, strategy and weaponry later earned their own distinction in terrorist annals.

El Sayyid Nosair Mahmud Abouhalima and Mohammad Salameh, were convicted in the 1993 trade center bombing. Nosair, Salameh and Abouhalima are all serving life prison terms.

In late 2000, Mohamed resurfaced in federal court in Manhattan, admitting he served as a key intelligence officer in al-Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad for 20 years. Mohamed pleaded guilty to a host of crimes, including conspiring to murder U.S. citizens and destroy U.S. buildings and property around the world.

Mohamed further admitted he photographed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, for bin Laden and that bin Laden personally selected the spot where a truck bomber should conduct his suicide attack. The outcome of Mohamed’s case or sentence is sealed.

Wadih el Hage. A nationalized citizen born in Lebanon, el Hage came to the United States to attend college in Louisiana. He too found his way to Brooklyn, the mosque and Alkifah in the early 1990s, where he befriended Abouhalima.

El Hage’s arrival in New York also marked a strange chapter in Alkifah’s history. Days after el Hage’s arrival, Shalabi was found slain in his ransacked Seagate apartment, stabbed 40 times and shot behind the ear.

The March 1, 1991, killing has never been solved, but at a 1998 pre-trial hearing for the embassy bombing case, prosecutor Fitzgerald told a federal magistrate that a dispute arose over whom would control Alkifah and where its funding would go.

Fitzgerald said el Hage had admitted to investigators that he came to New York to replace Shalabi. He also said el Hage had admitted that he attempted to obtain firearms for Abouhalima.

“We’re not saying that this defendant physically carried out that murder,” Fitzgerald said. “But when he shows up to replace someone, the person turns up dead. And that he was trying to obtain firearms for someone who would later blow up the World Trade Center.”

El Hage was convicted in 2001 of conspiring with bin Laden in a worldwide plot to kill Americans.

Ghazi Abu Maizer. Just before dawn on July 31, 1997, Abdel Rahman Mosabbah, a young Arab man, flagged down a police officer near the Atlantic Avenue train station in Brooklyn and told the cop that his roommate, Ghazi Abu Maizer, was intent on conducting a suicide bombing of the station during rush hour.

In a predawn raid, police found Maizer, a Palestinian, with a fully-rigged pipe bomb filled with nails, an unfinished bomb and a letter protesting U.S. support for Israel. The letter demanded the release of Ramzi Yousef, convicted as the mastermind of the 1993 trade center bombing, and promised to “burn the Jews” if demands were not met.

An FBI agent testified at Abu Maizer’s 1998 trial that although Maizer had only been in Brooklyn for a few months, he had worshiped at the Al-Farooq mosque. Abu Maizer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

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WORLD TRADE CENTER TERRORIST ATTACK IN NEW YORK
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