THE NEW York Times has claimed that associates of the al Qaeda terrorist network used Cyprus to buy a boat for half a million dollars, as part of its plan to fund terror activities.
American investigators believe that the $450,000 cash purchase was at the time one of the largest made by companies under the control of Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden.
According to the newspaper, two men from the Middle East brought a vessel in Limassol in 1994, setting up two front companies in Cyprus to do so.
An unnamed Cypriot accountancy firm and lawyer did the routine work, enlisted by Wadih El Hage, a convicted terrorist now serving a life sentence, the paper reported.
El Hage, a naturalised American citizen, was bin Laden’s personal secretary in Sudan in the early 1990s. He travelled widely on his behalf, making purchases and setting up front companies.
The unnamed Cypriot lawyer was told to send all the legal particulars to an address in Hamburg.
The recipient was Mamoun Darkazanli, whom German investigators suspect of being part of a terror cell which supported the September 11 attacks on the US.
The deal is reported to have been arranged between July 1993 and April 1994. A 224-foot freighter, then called Jennifer, was bought from a German sea captain called Claus Darley.
The lawyer told the newspaper that the ship would have failed Cypriot standards, so a third company was created in Malta where standards were less restrictive, the paper said.
After the sale, the vessel was repaired in Limassol.
After the sale, the ship was named Seastar and was used to transport sesame and watermelon seeds all over the Red Sea.
No concrete evidence ties it to a terror attack.
The only tenuous link is that it set sail from Jeddah a day before a November 1995 car bomb exploded in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Seven people were killed in the explosion, including five US civil servants.
In 1996 the Seastar was re-sold to a Norwegian company controlled by a group of Somalis, now under the microscope for “suspected ties” to al Qaeda.
But the boat sank 18 months ago off the coast of Oman.
Al Qaeda feeds off a far-reaching network of legitimate businesses, ranging from construction to agriculture to an investment firm to generate funds to support terrorism.
Investigators believe the network owns at least 20 ships. They fear bin Laden might try to use one of them to escape from the clutches of the American military, the paper said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
