Abdurrahman Alamoudi, the former high-profile “moderate” Muslim who is now accused of helping finance terrorism, is telling some interesting stories these days. From the New York Times:
ASHINGTON, June 9 — While the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was renouncing terrorism and negotiating the lifting of sanctions last year, his intelligence chiefs ordered a covert operation to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia and destabilize the oil-rich kingdom, according to statements by two participants in the conspiracy.
Those participants, Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in Alexandria, Va., and Col. Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, have given separate statements to American and Saudi officials outlining the plot.
Mr. Alamoudi, has told Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and federal prosecutors that Colonel Qaddafi approved the assassination plan. Mr. Qaddafi’s son, in an interview in London, called the accusation “nonsense.”
American officials confirm that Mr. Alamoudi and Mr. Ismael have offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and that they appear to be credible enough to have launched an American investigation. But the officials said they are still examining the scope of the plot, how far it advanced and whether Colonel Qaddafi was involved. They said the accusations were one reason the United States had not removed Libya from the State Department’s list of nations that support terrorism.
Here’s some background on Alamoudi from the Jihad Watch archives:
From the Washington Post November 2, 2003:
…by the early 1990s, the Pentagon was working closely with U.S. Muslim activists to hire Islamic chaplains to minister to Philips’s new converts and their co-religionists. One architect of this initiative was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was indicted Oct. 23 on money-laundering charges for allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya, which is designated by U.S. officials as a state sponsor of terrorism.”
From Insight Magazine Nov. 20, 2003:
On Sept. 11, 2001, as people around the world opened their hearts and their checkbooks to victims of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, a prominent Muslim activist laid out $3,000 of his own. But he didn’t have the victims in mind. He used the occasion to help re-elect one of his favorite federal lawmakers: a feisty left-winger who kept the FBI in her political crosshairs.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Abdurahman Alamoudi wrote two checks that day totaling $3,000 to the campaign committee of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia Democrat who would spend the next – and last – year of her short tenure in office attacking President George W. Bush and the post-9/11 war on terrorism.
Twelve months after McKinney’s electoral defeat, in September 2003, Alamoudi would be a federal prisoner facing allegations that he laundered money from Libya to finance his political activity in Washington and that he served as a Virginia-based paymaster for terrorists whose members included al-Qaida. He was caught in London with a suitcase containing $380,000 in cash that he admitted he had been given in Libya.
Washington Post December 1, 2003:
In late October 2000, Hillary Clinton, who was running for the U.S. Senate in New York, returned thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Alamoudi and other Muslims after some media described them as supporters of Palestinian violence. Presidential candidate George W. Bush returned $1,000 at the same time.
Alamoudi was furious. When he arrived at a demonstration against U.S. Middle East policies in Lafayette Square on Oct. 28, 2000, friends recalled, he angrily took the microphone.
“‘Anybody’s a supporter of Hamas here?’ he yelled as the crowd cheered. ‘Hear that, Bill Clinton, we are all supporters of Hamas! . . . I am also a supporter of Hezbollah!'”