Tuesday, August 15, 2006

And with friends like that...

Apparently, many British citizens of Pakistani descent unknowingly footed the bill for the latest "foiled" terrorist plot with millions donated to an earthquake relief charity in Pakistan.

Ah, this reminds me of the days when the Irish bars in Chicago were full of people collecting for "widows and orphans of the struggle".

The Pakistani charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is allegedly a front for Lashkar-i-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist group. The charity received a transfer of approximately 5 million pounds of donated funds from Great Britain, but used less than half on actual earthquake relief.

Nice.

WaPo:

Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said reports that Jamaat-ud-Dawa funded the suspects in the terrorism plot are "very, very credible."

The organization "is recognized as being an important source of funding," he said. "I think authorities feel that quite a bit of money has passed through their hands."

"We know charities are used for this kind of terrorist purpose very often," Wilkinson said.

A spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Abdullah Muntazer, disputed reports that his group had funded suspects in the alleged plot in Britain and said, "We condemn every kind of terrorism." The organization is "totally based in Pakistan" and has no network or affiliations with Britain, he said. Jamaat-ud-Dawa operates charities, runs more than 100 schools and clinics, and has about 1,000 offices in Pakistan, Muntazer said."

So the government of Pakistan is totally convinced and aware of our activities, and there is no investigation," he said.


And we should believe him, because Pakistan is always completely honest in their dealings with us.

They've never sold nuclear weapons to our enemies, for example, and then blamed the massive technology and material transfer on a single person. Also, they never then promptly issued that person a state pardon.

Right. And we never looked the other way while they did it.

Because Pakistan is our friend.

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