Documents detail Saudi terror links: Saudi-government accounting schedules showing payments to families of suicide bombers are among records Israel seized from Palestinian terrorist cells

Insight on the News, June 10, 2002 by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Only a small portion of the documents Israel seized from Palestinian terrorist cells and governmental offices during the monthlong incursion into the West Bank has been made public, but already one Arab state and its highly paid U.S. lobbyists are crying foul. After Israeli revelations that the Saudi government had been paying blood money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, the Saudis put out the word that the Israeli documents were "false."

Not mistakenly interpreted, not taken out of context, not misleading or mistranslated, but false. "It is complete and utter nonsense that the Saudi government has been giving money to the families of suicide bombers," Saudi public-relations agent Michael Petruzzello tells INSIGHT.

The documents come in many flavors. They include Saudi-government accounting schedules showing the amount of money paid to individual Palestinians and their families, with the names of suicide bombers and others who carried out armed attacks against Israelis highlighted in yellow, blue and pink. They include correspondence between Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Saudi government that discusses the payments. They also include a damning letter from the Saudis complaining that the Palestinians had exposed the secret financial ties by allowing the publication of a Feb. 19 report in the PA publication al-Hayat al-Jedida thanking Saudi Arabia for assisting the families of terrorists killed in attacks on Israelis.

The Israelis also captured official PA correspondence praising the bombers and a Hamas leaflet lauding a teen-age "martyr" for his "quality suicide action" The teen-ager, Natir Muhammad Mahmud Hamed, appears as No. 91 on one list of 102 Palestinians whose families received the Saudi blood money. He carried out a shooting at the Afula bus station on Oct. 5, 2001, in which three Israeli civilians were killed and 14 were wounded.

"We have several warehouses full of documents and have finished our preliminary analysis of them," Israeli military-intelligence analyst Col. Miriam Eisen tells INSIGHT. "We will be releasing them as we are able to put them into context, not one by one."

Many of these documents were seized at the offices of the Tulkarm Zakat (Charity) Association, a nongovernmental agency that dispensed social assistance to the families of suicide bombers primarily from foreign donors, including the government of Saudi Arabia. Other foreign donors included the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in Richardson, Texas, whose assets were frozen in December 2001 on presidential order because of its alleged ties to terrorist groups.

The HLF frequently has been singled out by the Israelis as a major source of funding for Hamas. Last year, it raised an estimated $13 million, which it boasted of donating to charities in the West Bank and Gaza. HLF supporters, which include groups such as the American Muslim Council and the Islamic Association for Palestine, claim they merely are providing humanitarian aid for Palestinian families, much as the Saudis are doing today.

Khaled Saffuri, a former legislative director of the American Muslim Council who now heads the Islamic Institute in Washington, has met with top Justice Department officials several times since the HLF was shut down--including a private dinner with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft--questioning the breadth and manner of the FBI crackdown on Muslim charities in America. Saffuri openly boasts of his ties to the Bush White House and to top Republican strategist Grover Norquist, who cofounded the Islamic Institute four years ago.

In a meeting with INSIGHT editors last week, Saffuri firmly denounced Hamas, Hezbollah and all other terrorist groups. He called for Arafat's ouster. Norquist, also present at the meeting, heatedly dismissed critics of his efforts on behalf of Saffuri and other Muslim leaders, some of whom have been tied to Hamas fund-raising efforts in the United States, as "bigots" and "racists spreading lies."

When he announced the closure of the HLF on Dec. 4, 2001, President George W. Bush made clear that the group had violated the law. "Money raised by the Holy Land Foundation is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers. Money raised by the Holy Land Foundation also is used by Hamas to recruit suicide bombers and to support their families" Bush said.

The Israelis seized extensive correspondence between the HLF and the Tulkarm Charity Association, which the Israelis labeled "one of the power centers of Hamas in Tulkarm." The charity "also has ties with the operational apparatus of Hamas which recruits youths in order to perpetrate suicide attacks," an Israeli intelligence analysis of the captured documents states.

Israel's claims about both groups were buttressed by an affidavit in support of shutting down the HLF filed in federal court on Nov. 15, 2001, by Dale L. Watson, assistant FBI director for counter-terrorism. The affidavit itemized payments by the HLF to the Tulkarm group and named five top Hamas officials who had received the money.