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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Jizya: Europe finances al-Qaeda through ransom payments

Jul 30, 2014 3:37 pm By Robert Spencer

30KIDNAP-master675Europe (and the U.S.) are financing al-Qaeda’s jihad through ransom payments. That’s why we continue to see kidnappings of Westerners, and these kidnappings will continue into the indefinite future, because for the jihadists, they are lucrative.

“Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror,” by Rukmini Callimachi, New York Times, July 29, 2014 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

BAMAKO, Mali — The cash filled three suitcases: 5 million euros.

The German official charged with delivering this cargo arrived here aboard a nearly empty military plane and was whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of Mali, who had offered Europe a face-saving solution to a vexing problem.

Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali.

In truth, all sides understood that the cash was bound for an obscure group of Islamic extremists who were holding 32 European hostages, according to six senior diplomats directly involved in the exchange.

The suitcases were loaded onto pickup trucks and driven hundreds of miles north into the Sahara, where the bearded fighters, who would soon become an official arm of Al Qaeda, counted the money on a blanket thrown on the sand. The 2003 episode was a learning experience for both sides. Eleven years later, the handoff in Bamako has become a well-rehearsed ritual, one of dozens of such transactions repeated all over the world.

Kidnapping Europeans for ransom has become a global business for Al Qaeda, bankrolling its operations across the globe.

While European governments deny paying ransoms, an investigation by The New York Times found that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken in at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, of which $66 million was paid just last year.

In news releases and statements, the United States Treasury Department has cited ransom amounts that, taken together, put the total at around $165 million over the same period.

These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, who funneled the money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid, according to interviews conducted for this article with former hostages, negotiators, diplomats and government officials in 10 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The inner workings of the kidnapping business were also revealed in thousands of pages of internal Qaeda documents found by this reporter while on assignment for The Associated Press in northern Mali last year.

In its early years, Al Qaeda received most of its money from deep-pocketed donors, but counterterrorism officials now believe the group finances the bulk of its recruitment, training and arms purchases from ransoms paid to free Europeans.

Put more bluntly, Europe has become an inadvertent underwriter of Al Qaeda….

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Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, dhimmitude, European Union, United States, Useful idiots Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Daniel Triplett says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 3:52 pm

    Just like the American People’s multi-Billion $$$ payment traitor Kerry just forked over to Iran.

    Jizya.

    A total disgrace.

  2. Angemon says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 4:04 pm

    21st century Trinitarians?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitarian_Order

    “The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of the Captives […] is a Catholic religious order that was founded in the area of Cerfroid, some 80 km northeast of Paris, at the end of the twelfth century. […] The founding-intention for the Order was the ransom of Christians held captive by non-Christians, a consequence of crusading and pirating along the Mediterranean coast of Europe.”

    Kidnapping and ransoming hostages is not exactly a new practice for muslims. It’s rooted in the quran and the hadith. Mad mo did it, so it’s halal.

    • TH says

      Jul 30, 2014 at 8:48 pm

      Thhat is the Trinitarians are not the only religious order founded for that purpose. There is also the Order of the Merced (meaning mercy in Spanish). In fact, the Trinitarians cooperated in the rescue of Cervantes who was kidnapped and taken to what is now ALgeria when crossing from Italy to Spain. Spain eventually cleared the Mediterranean of muslim pirates. That is the origin of the saying in Spanish “moors on the coast”. Of course the British were also experts at piracy and muchof the ransom payments made to the likes of Al Qaeda groups and Somali pirates are arranged in London. The Brits have lot of experience at this. Centuries, in fact.
      Also the Trinitarians are still rescueing boy soldiers and such in Africa by paying ransoms, I suppose it is to yihadist groups. Who else are involved in slavery these days in a gand scale?

  3. Jose Allen says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 4:18 pm

    Ransoms paid ensure more kidnappings. Everyone should sign a paper insisting that if they are kidnapped then NO ransom is to be paid. NO searches to be made. St Dominic was waylaid by Muslim brigands in the thirteenth century. They threatened him with death. He cheerfully replied that it would be a pleasure for him to suffer as his Lord had.. puzzled, they let him go. Sometimes the simplest answer confounds the wicked. Of course his friend was de Montfort who simply sacked the villages where muslims hung out… amongst the civilian population. Let the saint inform us on dying joyfully, but let the soldiery eradicate terrorists from the face of the earth.

    • gravenimage says

      Jul 30, 2014 at 6:05 pm

      Jose Allen wrote:

      Ransoms paid ensure more kidnappings. Everyone should sign a paper insisting that if they are kidnapped then NO ransom is to be paid. NO searches to be made…
      ……………………………

      I can certainly understand why you oppose paying ransom, Jose—this rewards the kidnappers and further funds Jihad (although I have somewhat more sympathy for the payers of ransom to rescue innocent people than I do for most other forms of appeasement and dhimmitude).

      But why would you have a problem with *searching* for kidnap victims?

      Surely you do not hold that Muslims should be allowed to kidnap victims unopposed—to rape, enslave, or murder their victims as they see fit?

      Not only is this appalling in and of itself, but as we have seen in the case of the kidnapped girls in Nigeria, a lack of action by the Infidel authorities just further emboldens the Jihadists—Boko Haram has now several times kidnapped *more* girls, and are taunting the Nigerian police and army for not doing anything to stop them.

  4. jewdog says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 4:34 pm

    The Barbary pirates’ ransom continues. At least back then people called it what it was and there were no illusions about it. Plus, the Western countries weren’t inviting the pirates and their families to immigrate and get on welfare.

    • Richie says

      Jul 30, 2014 at 5:44 pm

      the difference is we had better leadership back then- Thomas Jefferson knew the Muslim pirates needed to be destroyed, and many of them were. Obama on the other hand would have supported such pirates

  5. Beagle says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 5:08 pm

    Amazing that Danegeld is a legendary and cautionary tale originating in Europe.

    “That people do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important lesson history has to teach.”
    — Aldous Huxley

  6. gravenimage says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 5:39 pm

    Jizya: Europe finances al-Qaeda through ransom payments
    ………………………………..

    Even without this, pious Mohammedans would continue to kidnap Western Infidels, if only to terrorize and murder them.

    But yes—kidnapping Infidels and holding them for ransom was practiced by the vile “Prophet” of Islam himself, Muhammed.

    It is a major subject of one of the ugliest Suras of the Qur’an, Al-Anfal (spoils of war, or booty), where such “spiritual” matters are covered as to whether it is permissible to rape female kidnap victims, even though it may diminish the ransom that can be demanded (guess what—raping their captives is perfectly Halal!).

    And it has continued down through the ages—kidnapping Christian pilgrims during the Middle Ages; American and European sailors during the era of the Barbary pirates; and Christian and animist Sudanese over the past twenty years, who have often been ransomed by charitable Westerners—the protagonist of Dave Eggers chronicle “What is the What?” was freed from slavery by a group of American Christians—and then there was the kidnapping of ship crews by the Somali pirates—one of the very few bits of Muslim savagery that we appear to have successfully shut down.

    But it won’t stop—Islam is a creed *founded* on kidnapping and ransom.

    More:

    Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali.
    ………………………………..

    This makes it *much, much worse*.

    This isn’t “humanitarian aid”—instead, it is funding the most *anti-human* ideology in the world today.

    These dhimmis should at least have the decency to call this ransom what it is.

  7. Beagle says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 5:55 pm

    “Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali.”

    Mali was once known for syncretic Muslims who liked music. Was once. Now it’s mainly known for Tuareg (after whom the VW SUV is named) rebels in the North with connections to al Qaeda, armed to the teeth thanks to the war in Libya. Fortunately the French?! killed some of them a few years ago.

  8. Walter Sieruk says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 6:15 pm

    Al Qaeda getting their finances through kidnapping. Wel,l the Al Qaeda network is made up of Muslims and Muslim ,as least in lip service goes , do claim to respect the Bible strongly condemns kidnapping. In fact, the Bible teaches that kidnapping is such a terrible crime that it warrants death to those who engage in it. For example Exodus 21:16 reads “He that stealth a man…shall shall surly be put to death.” [K..JV.] Furthermore, even the goals and foundations as well as the means of Al Qaeda is wrong. For as shown before for to this Islamic entity of having the whole world being an Islamic world is an unrealistic and thus lost cause. This is because Islam is a false religion, Proverbs 14:12. John 3:16,16,36. 14 :6. First John 2:22,23. Much more prove of this statement may be seen, for all those who are willing to see, in the Christian internet site answering -islam.org

  9. Vapourking says

    Jul 30, 2014 at 11:28 pm

    Nothing new here, Mo started the whole show by raiding caravans using the booty to finance the spread of Islam.
    What other religion has within it’s scriptures, directions on how to split the war booty, so Allah apparently sent down revelations on how to distribute the proceeds of crime, although strangely the thou shall not steal line doesn’t apply to Muslims.
    We inadvertently fund Islam’s existence, through foreign aid, petro-dollars, immigration and welfare.
    Co-existing with Islam is very much a one sided argument, fairness, sharing, tolerance, empathy, morals, values are still a work in progress for Islam. Tolerating Islam’s nonsense has well and truly reached the tipping point, no amount of PC can disguise the truth.
    Islam desperately needs to grow up take some responsibility and start contributing, or face the enviable consequences.
    The poor me we’re oppressed crap just doesn’t cut it anymore.

  10. Mirren10 says

    Jul 31, 2014 at 6:20 pm

    Dane-geld

    A.D. 980-1016

    IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
    To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
    “We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
    Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

    And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
    And the people who ask it explain
    That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
    And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

    It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
    To puff and look important and to say: –
    “Though we know we should defeat you,
    we have not the time to meet you.
    We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

    And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
    That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.

    It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
    For fear they should succumb and go astray;
    So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
    You will find it better policy to say: —

    “We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
    No matter how trifling the cost;
    For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
    And the nation that plays it is lost!”

    • gravenimage says

      Jul 31, 2014 at 9:32 pm

      It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation…
      …………………………

      Yes, it is, Mirren. This was one reason why the US decided to fight in the early 19th-century.

      Before the revolution, American shipping and sailors were protected (to an extent) by the payment of British tribute.

      After the independence we no longer had that protection, and the Barbary pirates considered us fair game.

      We *did* pay tribute at first—but it soon became obvious that Muslim demands would outstrip *our entire GDP* as a fledgeling nation. We simply could not afford to pay that amount of tribute, and Muslims began to seize our ships in the Mediterranean and enslave our sailors.

      We couldn’t afford a Navy and a Marine Corps—but we built one anyway. After we began to fight back, we were soon joined by the British and the French, who followed our example.

      And while it hasn’t gotten much attention, one of the very few clear victories over Jihad terror over the past decade has been the suppression of the Somali pirates—due to a consortium of battleships patrolling the Horn of Africa, shipping there is (almost) completely safe.

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        Jul 31, 2014 at 10:01 pm

        I believe it was Jefferson himself who came up with the slogan, “Millions for defence but *not a penny for tribute*”.

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