U.A.E., Saudi Officials Still Funding al-Qaida

Kenneth R. Timmerman
Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006
WASHINGTON -- An American conservationist groups says it has "new evidence" tying top Saudi and United Arab Emirates leaders to al-Qaida, but was prevented from presenting it late last week after an official protest from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.


In a move United Nations officials described as "unprecedented," the government of Saudi Arabia sought to ban the group, which has United Nations observer status, from presenting testimony to the U.N. body in Geneva that monitors the international traffic of falcons and other endangered species.


The group, the Union for the Conservation of Raptors (UCR), told the U.N. committee it had "actionable information" on ongoing smuggling operations by the governments of the United Arab Emirates and other Arab rulers.


In a letter outlying the proposed testimony, the group said that it would present evidence of bribes paid to U.N. officials by United Arab Emirates and Saudi officials.


Bank transfers obtained by the group showed payments in November 2005 totaling more than a half-million dollars to a top U.N. official by "a United Arab Emirates person who is associated with the ruler," said Alan Parrot, a spokesman for the group.


In exchange for the bribes, the U.N. official authorized the shipment of smuggled falcons by the United Arab Emirates and the Saudi government to extravagant royal hunting camps in Central Asia, where the Arab rulers "met with top al-Qaida officials and international arms dealers," Parrot said.


The UCR also said it would present documents that showed the personal involvement of one of Saudi Arabia's top diplomats to the United States in smuggling falcons from the United States to Saudi Arabia for use in the falconry camps.


The group's testimony at the 54th Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was scheduled for last Friday in Geneva, but Parrot says he was notified on Thursday, Oct. 5, that the U.N. had acceded to the Saudi demand and was "canceling our request to testify."


Former Democratic Rep. Steven Solarz, who is a member of the UCR board, sponsored the group's U.N. accreditation, as did the United States Department of the Interior, documents obtained by NewsMax show.


The month-long falconry camps are "al-Qaida's boardroom," Parrot said in his letter to the CITES secretariat.


"Those same royal falconry camps for which the U.S. CITES secretariat makes administrative allowances that permit import/export licenses to be issued, provide ongoing material support to al-Qaida's leaders," he wrote.


"Cars, cash, weapons, and medicine are transferred to al-Qaida in these camps," which "continue as the venue of first-choice for clandestine meetings between al-Qaida and U.S. "allies" from Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.," Parrot added.


They luxury hunting camps provide an extraordinary opportunity for top al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, to meet with top Arab princes and solicit money from them, while engaging in their favorite sport: hunting the Houbara bustard [a threatened desert bird that is a favorite prey of falconers] with peregrine and Gyrofalcons.


Former White House counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke told the 9/11 Commission that the United States was planning to bomb a royal falconry camp in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was present in the late 1990s, but called off the raid because a senior government minister from the United Arab Emirates was present.


Bin Laden and his top aid, Ayman al-Zawahiri, no longer come to the month-long hunts, but continue to send personal representatives who are "treated with extraordinary deference," Parrot told NewsMax.


The UCR has sought for years to get the United Nations to enforce the CITES agreement and crack down on falcon smuggling, and has provided information to the United States government on the ongoing al-Qaida fund-raising efforts at the camps.


"We have direct eyewitnesses in the camps who are telling us that representatives of bin Laden continue to come into these camps, and walk away with luxury cars and cash — even today," Parrot said.


Because the camps must be licensed by the United Nations CITES secretariat, Parrot and his group have focused on exposing the illegal smuggling of falcons. "If the licenses stop, the camps stop," he said.


One of the largest royal falconry camps was leased for 10 years from the government of Kazakhstan for $50 million, the UCR says, and includes much of the open rolling steppes of Western Kazakhstan.


From there, "caravans consisting of several hundred Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan Patrols ravel south to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to hunt the Houbara with falcons," Parrot said. "That's where they met weapons merchants and UBL representatives."


Now that it has been barred by the United Nations CITES organization that authorizes the falconry camps, the group says it is hoping to present its evidence to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, because of his outspoken condemnation of U.N. corruption.