WarSclerotic

After 9/11, Saudis Had Huma Abedin-Connected Group Removed from Terror List

by Lee Stranahan

14 Jun 2016

Source: After 9/11, Saudis Had Huma Abedin-Connected Group Removed from Terror List

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin has deep and, so far, unexplained connections to a Saudi Arabian man who ran a Saudi organization that U.S. intelligence connected to terror funding during both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s administrations, but escaped scrutiny after pressure from the Saudi Arabian government.

Details about the group called the Muslim World League were originally published in 2001 and 2004, but their significance was not fully clear until recently, with Huma Abedin acting as co-chairwoman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Although Abedin has made headlines in recent months for her central role in the Hillary Clinton email server scandal, as well as a Showtime movie that highlights her husband, disgraced former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s failed New York mayoral bid, Abedin has managed to avoid any serious scrutiny from the press. However, given the clear danger posed by Islamist terror groups like the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), the newly unearthed material about Huma Abedin’s direct connection to a man who ran a group that U.S. intelligence suspected of direct involvement with terrorism raises deeply troubling questions.

The man, Abdullah Omar Naseef, and his connection to both Huma Abedin and her family, has already been verified by mainstream media such as Vanity Fair, which described Naseef “as a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government” who “sits on the king’s Shura Council” and as “the patron” of a journal run by Abedin’s family for which Abedin herself worked. The article gives more detail and Abedin and Naseef:

Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is Pakistani; her late father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian. Both were intellectuals. When Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.

Now, for the first time, Breitbart News reveals that reports from mainstream media sources at the time show that intelligence officials believed for years that Naseef’s Muslim World League was connected to terror, but failed to inform the public of the connections due to pressure from Saudi Arabia.

As Newsweek reported less than a month after the 9/11 attack (emphasis added):

The Saudis have probably done more to penetrate Al Qaeda than any other foreign intelligence service, but Al Qaeda in turn has penetrated the Saudi regime. Two interrelated global charities directly financed by the Saudi government–the International Islamic Relief Organization and the Muslim World League –have been used by bin Laden to finance his operations. The organizations were left off the list of groups sanctioned by the United States last week, U.S. officials hinted to NEWSWEEK, in order to avoid embarrassing the Saudi government.

This inaction against Naseef’s Muslim World League was confirmed in a 2004 story by Harper’s. They wrote:

In other cases, the Bush Administration made a conscious decision not to pursue major Saudi conduits for terrorist funding. The clearest example involves two ostensible charities that are long known to have funneled money to Al Qaeda–the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League (MWL). Both are financed directly by the Saudi government. MWL is an evangelical organization that was created to help spread Wahhabism, the Saudi brand of Islamic fundamentalism; IIRO is a humanitarian relief organization that operates primarily in Muslim countries.

Harper’s also noted that during the Clinton administration the Central Intelligence Agency issued a report about Naseef’s Muslim World League and the International Islamic Relief Organization.

Consider the timing: in the fall of 1996, Huma Abedin began working in the White House. Harper’s wrote:

Yet a 1996 CIA report alleged that IIRO helped to fund six militant training camps in Afghanistan, and noted that the former head of the group’s Philippines office–Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law–had been linked to plots to “target the pope and U.S. airlines.”

Now consider this: two years later, Huma Abedin was now embedded in the White House as one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides. We know this because Hillary Clinton spoke of her at events like the annual Ramadan dinner that was initiated by the Clintons, as previously reported by Breitbart News.

While Huma Abedin had direct access to the White House and Hillary Clinton, her family patron’s Muslim World League was thought to be involved in terrorism against the United States. According to Harper’s:

U.S. intelligence officials also believe that MWL employees were involved in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Although both IIRO and MWL were known to have funded Al Qaeda, U.S. government sources indicated to Newsweek in October 2001 that the Bush Administration left the two organizations off the list of designated terrorist groups in order to spare the Saudi government from embarrassment.

Defenders of Clinton and Abedin have attempted to spin concerns about Abedin’s disturbing connections as a crazed right-wing conspiracy theory, but the facts are coming out, and with America focused on the presidential race and terrorism, it is just a matter of time before the truth comes out.