Documents taken from the villa where Osama bin Laden has been living show that the fight against terrorist financing circuits led Al-Qaida network to use kidnappings to finance itself, U.S. officials said on Monday.
Although this practice of abduction is not new, information gathered from the villa in Abottabad demonstrates that it “this is considered a means to deal with funding issues,” said one U.S. official on condition of anonymity. “It is clear that Al-Qaida in Pakistan resorted to kidnapping in exchange for ransom in recent years, as a means to finance its terrorist operations”, said another official on condition of anonymity.
Since 2001, the international cooperation has been developed to identify and eliminate terrorist financing circuits, especially through the supervision of international fund transfers. United States also considers that private donations in Saudi Arabia are still “the main source of worldwide financing of the Sunni terrorist groups,” according to an U.S. diplomatic note in 2009, distributed by WikiLeaks.
Other notes show lack of involvement of other countries in the region, especially Qatar and Kuwait in the fight against the financing of these groups. According to David Cohen, a senior official from the U.S. Treasury, elimination of “charismatic” Al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden in early May, “means the disappearance of a person who was a useful symbol for fundraising”.
The practice of abduction is widespread among several organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda, especially Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQMI). AQMI still holds hostages, four French, since mid-September 2010, abducted in northern Niger, and an Italian, abducted in early February in southern Algeria.