U.S. Sanctions Target al Qaeda Financiers

On August 5, the U.S. Treasury issued new sanctions targeting financial supporters of al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syria branch. The following is the Treasury Department’s press release.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today imposed sanctions on Sa'd bin Sa'd Muhammad Shariyan al-Ka’bi (al-Ka’bi), a Qatari financier of al-Qaida’s Syria-based affiliate, al-Nusrah Front (ANF), and also on a Qatari al-Qaida facilitator, 'Abd al-Latif Bin 'Abdallah Salih Muhammad al-Kawari (al-Kawari).  Both have been designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) pursuant to Executive Order 13224.  Any assets these individuals may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from doing business with them.

In recent years, ANF and al-Qaida have resorted to increasingly complicated schemes in the face of international pressure to maintain funding flows to support terrorist activities. Today’s action advances efforts to target the external funding networks of ANF and al-Qaida. The individuals designated today played roles in supporting violent extremists in Syria, Pakistan, and Sudan.

“These sanctions target two major facilitators of the al-Nusrah Front and al-Qaida,” said Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin. “Treasury remains committed to using our financial intelligence and authorities to unravel and disrupt the funding schemes exploited by terrorist groups.”

Sa'd bin Sa'd Muhammad Shariyan al-Ka'bi

As of early 2014, al-Ka'bi reported that he had set up donation campaigns in Qatar to aid with fundraising in response to a request from an ANF associate for money to purchase both weapons and food.  In that same time period, an ANF official requested that al-Ka'bi act as an intermediary for collecting a ransom for a hostage being held by ANF, and al-Ka'bi worked to facilitate a ransom payment in exchange for the release of a hostage held by ANF.

In 2013, al-Ka'bi worked closely with U.S.- and UN-designated Kuwaiti ANF fundraiser Hamid Hamad Hamid al-'Ali and received funding from him to support ANF. Since at least late 2012, al-Ka'bi has provided support to ANF in Syria.  

Abd al-Latif Bin 'Abdallah Salih Muhammad al-Kawari

Al-Kawari has collected financial support for al-Qaida and served as an al-Qaida security official.  In early 2012, al-Kawari worked with al-Qaida facilitators to coordinate the delivery of funding from Qatari financiers intended to support al-Qaida and to deliver receipts confirming that al-Qaida received foreign donor funding from Qatar-based extremists.  Early that year, he also facilitated the international travel of a courier who was carrying tens of thousands of dollars earmarked for al-Qaida.

In the early 2000s, al-Kawari worked with US- and UN-designated al-Qaida operative Mustafa Hajji Muhammad Khan, also known as Hassan Ghul (Ghul), and US- and UN-designated Qatari al-Qaida facilitator Ibrahim 'Isa Haji Muhammad al-Bakr (al-Bakr) to transfer money to al-Qaida in Pakistan.  At that time, al-Kawari also obtained a fraudulent passport for Ghul, which Ghul used to travel to Qatar with al-Kawari and al-Bakr.