Investigation of Gaza #Flotilla Turns To Terrorist Ties Of Mavi Marmara: IHH

While investigations are being carried out by both the Israel and the UN into why the Mavi Marmara was the only ship boarded where the IDF was ambushed and people killed, in the US the focus is turning to Turkey as Flotilla focus turning to terror ties:

Key congressmen are pushing the Obama administration to complete its investigations "swiftly." House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard L. Berman, California Democrat, and Ed Royce, California Republican, the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs terrorism subcommittee, sent a letter last week to the Treasury Department stating that publicly available information "strongly supports designating" as a terrorist entity the Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief, also known as the Turkish IHH.

Although they referenced "the group's sponsorship of the provocative flotilla in May," Mr. Berman and Mr. Royce relied mostly on the group's reported connections to Hamas and al Qaeda, which predated the incident.

Truth be told, there are a number of connections and facts in the background of the IHH that are a cause for concern and need to be investigated. In fact, some have already done some investigating Based on the paper: The Role of Islamic Charities in International Terrorist Recruitment and Financing by Evan F. Kohlmann, published by The Danish Institute for International Studies, the court papers of the case of the United States of America v. Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi (especially page 17), and Right Side News, it emerges that:

• This is supposedly a human rights organization, but they work with directly, support, aid and are closely affiliated with the Islamic terror network: explicit ties to Hamas, Al Qaida, as well other militant Islamic organizations based in Algeria, Libya, Turkey.
  
• Cooperation between the Hamas government & IHH is pretty blatant. There was a recent joint press conference between a Hamas official, "the chairman of the governmental committee for breaking the siege on Gaza" and a representative of IHH. The Hamas minister of communications announced a month ago that the Hamas government made special preparations for the ships in the Gaza port including "repairing and dredging the basin of the port so that mid-sized ships could pass through". So Hamas is coordinating closely with this initiative. (Source: Right Side News)
  
• In December 1997, Turkish authorities began a criminal investigation into IHH when sources revealed to them that the IHH had purchased semi-automatic weapons from Islamic militant groups. Their Istanbul bureau was thoroughly searched and the local leaders arrested. Inside the bureau an array of items were found: "firearms, explosives, bomb-making instructions and a jihadi flag." After analyzing seized IHH documents, the Turkish authorities determined that the arrested leaders were about to be sent to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
  
• Famed counter-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere found that in the mid 1990's the IHH president conspired to recruit members for jihad, and sent members to war zones in Muslim countries in order to gain combatant experience. He obtained support by these Muslim countries by transferring weapon and explosives caches to these countries.
  
• In 1996, phone records of the IHH showed calls to an Al Qaida guesthouse in Milan and to Algerian terror cells throughout Europe.
  
• Jean-Louis Bruguiere also testified to a U.S. Court that the IHH played a "central role" in the attempted Al Qaida Millenium bomb plot targeting LAX. He added that the IHH is a "cover-up" NGO which served to recruit, forge document and traffic weapons for these Mujahideens.
  
• During the Iraqi war, IHH funneled funds to insurgents in a Sunni dominated area of central Iraq. These were funds used to kill American soldiers in Iraq.
  
• They have doctored their photos of providing humanitarian aid and relief supplies.
  
• During the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, the IHH was banned from providing relief aid efforts because it was deemed by the government as a fundamentalist organization and would not provide transparency to Turkish officials of their bank accounts.
  
• The IHH has also had contact with Abdurahman Alamoudi, founder of the American Muslim Council, who is serving a 23 year sentence for illegal transactions with the Libyan government and was part of a Libyan plot to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
  
• The IHH organization is banned in Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed an order citing the IHH as an organization that fund-raises for Hamas as well as assisting them. A worker from the organization was arrested on April 27th of this year in Judea and Samaria for assisting the IHH and other illegal organizations for "compromising the security of the area" according to the Shin Bet.

Ideally, based on the evidence, IHH could be put on the US list of terrorist groups, and if so:

Designating the Turkish IHH would help thwart its ability to assist terrorists. If it is named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, the Turkish IHH would be shut out from the U.S. financial system, and it could not work with U.S. charities, nongovernmental organizations or governmental agencies, nor could it raise money here. Such a designation also could help in freezing IHH money flows in the United States and elsewhere.

The greater impact of designation, though, would be political. In branding the Turkish IHH a terrorist entity, the United States would be sending a signal that it supports the Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza and that efforts to break it will not be taken lightly.

Read the whole thing.

Investigating the terrorist ties of IHH would put the focus where it belongs--on Turkey and its Islamist ties with the Iranian regime.

Technorati Tag: Gaza Flotilla and IHH and Turkey.