Counterterrorism Blog, August 3, 2006 01:29 PM
IIRO Funding Terror in Southeast Asia
By Zachary Abuza
That the IIRO had been funding terrorism in Southeast Asia since the early 1990s, is
not news. What is news is that it took the US Government 12 years since it first
became aware of its malfeasance when Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammad
Jamal Khalifah was arrested in the United States, along with Loay Bayazid and a
brother of Bin Laden in December 1994. Yet nothing was done despite damning
eviden! ce of what the IIRO was doing and who it was supporting in the Philippines.
The kid gloves were on when it came to the Saudis.
Even in the Philippines, nothing was done, as Khalifah put the Saudi Ambassador to
the Philippines on the board of directors, and he was never shy about closing the
consular section the tens of thousands of Filipinos who sought work in the Kingdom.
The IIRO was linked to Ramzi Yousef's plot to blow up 11 US jetliners, but still
nothing was done to shut down the IIRO's activities.
The Treasury Department's press release noted the close ties that the IIRO had in
funding the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). What was conspicuously absent was any
mention of the Moro Islamic Liberation Fron! t, a group with much deeper ties to JI and
Al Qaeda and one that took far more of the IIRO's funds.
The press release is interesting also in its vagueness about the Indonesian branch of
the IIRO, which had a very small footprint in the country. Instead, the IIRO tended to
partner with local charities, most notably KOMPAK, but others as well. KOMPAK
was active in supporting JI and two of its affiliated paramilitaries, and several JI
leaders/members worked for the organization during the worst period of sectarian
bloodletting. A few people, such as Agus Dwikarna, were the heads of the local
chapters of the IIRO and KOMPAK. Aris Munandar, whom the Treasury has already
designated, was a senior IIRO and KOMPAK official. To date, KOMPAK has still not
been designated. Omar al Farouq, the highest ranking Al Qaeda operative in
Southeast Asia until his arrest in mid-2004 (he was one of the captives who escaped
from US custody in Bagram) revealed that the IIRO was the primary source of Qaeda
funding to Jemaah Islamiyah.
The last thing of note in the statement is that it described how in 2004 Abd al-Hamil
Sulaiman al-Mujil invited a Philippines-based JI supporter to Saudi Arabia and provided
him to cash to support terrorist operations. This confirms that Gulf financiers have
really begun to rely on personal couriers to move significant amounts of funds in
support of terrorism.
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