Illinois: ex-leader of mosque linked to terrorism pleads guilty to drug distribution charges

Was this a means to finance the jihad? "Ex-Mosque leader pleads guilty to meth chemical distribution," from Daily Southtown, with thanks to Ruth King:

A former leader of a Southwest Side mosque where other leaders have been linked to international terrorism pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges he tried to distribute massive quantities of a chemical used to make methamphetimine.
Tariq Isa of Cicero admitted he conspired to buy more than 1.7 million tablets of pseudoephedrine. In his guilty plea, the 57-year-old Palestinian-American admitted he knew the substance would be used to manufacture a narcotic.

Isa is the former treasurer of the Chicago Islamic Center, also known as the Mosque of the Martyr Izzedine Al-Qassam, at 3358 W. 63th St. Two other former leaders at the mosque — Ghassan Ballut and Hatem Fariz — are currently on trial in Tampa, Fla., on federal terrorism charges they supported the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The charges against Isa do not mention terrorism. But at a hearing last summer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Noller noted Isa's ties to the other two mosque leaders and said he had been photographed with the international head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Noller added that at one point Ballut, Fariz and Isa were the only three men who controlled the mosque's bank account.

According to the charges, Isa arranged with a confidential government informant and a co-conspirator to buy hundreds of cases of psuedoephedrine, dubbed "medicine" by the men. Isa was arrested when he tried to pay for part of the shipment with $66,000 in cash stuffed in a shoe box.

Pseudoephedrine, a common ingrediant in cold medications, is legal to buy in small quantities. But the chemical is heavily regulated because of its necessary use in the making of meth.

Court records show that Isa also was investigated by agents of the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents for suspicion of cigarette smuggling. A search of his home in 2002 turned up equipment used to make counterfeit stamps indicating local cigarette sales taxes had been paid.

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6 Comments

Hugh | September 4, 2005 9:02 PM

There is no end to this.

SnowDawg | September 4, 2005 9:20 PM

Osama has taught him well. Drugs are how he planed to finance his Jihad empire.

Terminator | September 4, 2005 10:50 PM

Holy warriors, holy Koran, holy sites, holy drugs...

When will this 'religion' be outlawed, forbidden, verboten?

Dr. Pepper | September 4, 2005 11:13 PM

"When will this 'religion' be outlawed, forbidden, verboten?"

A safe bet would be: only after about ten more major 911-sized (or larger) attacks on ten different non-Muslim cities around the world.

By the time, let's say, the 6th attack happens, Western leaders and their underling staff will be finally convening symposiums that pose the question, "Does Islam itself contribute to terrorism?" These symposiums and other debates will go on for a couple of more years, more papers solicited, more Middle Eastern scholars and Muslim clerics invited to more round-tables, etc.

Meanwhile, attacks #7,8 and 9 will happen. Western leaders will behind closed doors say to each other, "Well, now what...?"

A year goes by. Attack #10 happens: finally, rationality reasserts itself, after a moratorium of 50-odd years.

Rebecca JW | September 5, 2005 6:13 PM

It may be attack number 2 or attack number 10, whatever the case that tipping point will be reached and the children of the pioneers, and the children of the slaves brought to this country and then given freedom after the immense moral struggle that was the Civil War, (all wars in all times are moral struggles as well as contests of pure strength and determination) and the children of all the immigrants who gave every ounce of humna strength to have a breath of freedom and a better future for their children and the children of the Jews who fled the Holocaust and the children of the Irish who fled the famine will all rise up and smite their enemies as one.

Muslims, non-thinkers that they are, somehow conclude they have the entire upper hand being superior as they are in the strength of will of a few, a few. We'll see how soon the entire Muslim world capitulates when itis really threatened in the tone of a Margaret Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan or a Roosevelt (either one as Hugh would say) who will call a spade a spade.

They will fold.

Order of the Dragon | September 5, 2005 8:24 PM

Why do Christians and Jews not terrorise the radical muslim clerics in our countries. They are reported constantly in the press yet they operate with impunity.

I have just come from watching the National Grographic 4 part series on the run-in to 9/11. It's time to make radical muslims and those that spread hate feel our hatred.

It's time for Christians and Jews to take these head-on. The beginnings of this hatred comes from the mosques - supposedly holy places that spout death and disease in the form of muslim teaching.

Take back the West now before it is too late. Take back Africa before she falls to the spread of the Islamic disease.

Stand up for your beliefs now before it is too late. What kind of world will your children inherit. Is it one where you would have them living like parts of Pakistan or Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Act now!

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