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Israeli intelligence: Narco-terror profits funded Sept. 11 attack

Special to World Tribune.com
GEOSTRATEGY-DIRECT
Friday, July 26, 2002

Profits from drugs shipped by Afghanistan were used by Al Qaida in carrying out the September 11 attacks, according to a classified report by Israel's police intelligence service.

Furthermore, Israeli intelligence has determined that Afghan drug traffickers reduced the price of opium to very low levels after September 11, in the hope of flooding the world with inexpensive heroin, said the report, disclosed by the Tel Aviv Maariv newspaper.

The Israelis estimate that the Taliban and Al Qaida have 2,800 tons of opium that can produce 280 tons of heroin worth some $80 billion in Europe. The stockpile could supply the continent for three years.

"This is how Muhammad Atta, who led the attack on the WTC, funded the activity," the report stated.



"For Bin Laden's organization, flooding the West with drugs is part of the Jihad that it can conduct through its financial arm, which operates without incriminating documentation."

Radical Islamic terrorists linked to Al Qaida and the Taliban are using "terror through an invasion of drugs" as a weapon against the West, the report stated.

The sheer scale of the drug trade in South Asia also makes it an economic weapons against the West. "The drugs and the scope of production in Afghanistan have the potential to impact the economies of countries since the amounts involved are huge," the report said, noting that "even after the Taliban regime was uprooted and another government was established, the assessment is that opium will continue to be grown, and even in greater quantities, because of the economic crisis the country is undergoing."

"There is a clear-cut connection between terror and crime, and the drug phenomenon has repercussions that go beyond crime and serious harm to public well-being," the report said. "The attack on the World Trade Center [WTC] underlines more than anything else how the drug problem constitutes a strategic threat on an international level, calling for world cooperation at the highest echelons in imposing the law."

The report noted that the U.S. military operations in the country may help to disrupt the illegal heroin trafficking from Afghanistan.

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