Homegrown terrorists
How a Hezbollah cell made millions in sleepy Charlotte, N.C.
Another important case leads back to North Carolina, law enforcement officials tell U.S. News. In December, a Middle Eastern man from Los Angeles was arrested in Asheville, N.C., carrying $279,000 in cash. He, too, was on his way to JR Discount, driving an empty tractor-trailer. Another tobacco smuggling case developed in Louisville, Ky. Still other leads point to Boston, Chicago, and New York.
Osama bin Laden gets the headlines these days, but his al Qaeda network is not the only dangerous terrorist group. "Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said not long ago, "and maybe al Qaeda is actually the B-team." Hezbollah's former operations chief, Imad Mugniyeh, remains one of America's most wanted men; like bin Laden, he has a $25 million price on his head.
Hezbollah's rap sheet is long: 19 Americans dead in 1996 at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; 28 murdered in 1992 at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina; 300 killed in 1983, at the U.S. and French barracks in Lebanon. The group also was behind the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, the kidnappings of 18 Americans, and the torture and murder of CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut. Last week came news that Argentine prosecutors have asked for arrests stemming from another Hezbollah strike, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that left 86 dead. Among those on their wanted list: Hezbollah's Mugniyeh, the former Iranian ambassador to Argentina, and Iran's top ayatollah, Ali Khameini.
Although Hezbollah hasn't hit any U.S. targets recently, officials remain on high alert. "We see them actively casing and surveilling American facilities," CIA Director George Tenet testified before Congress last month. "They have extensive contingency plans." Since the destruction of al Qaeda's Afghan camps, Hezbollah operates what is militant Islam's largest center for terrorist training, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Some intelligence analysts believe the group has an informal alliance with al Qaeda, for whom Hezbollah has provided explosives training.
Pizza man. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has many faces. While its military wing trains suicide bombers and threatens Israel's northern border, its political wing runs social services and fields politicians in the nation's parliament. Eight of the key suspects in the Charlotte case hailed from the same neighborhood of Beirut, a longtime Hezbollah stronghold. The cell's leader, Mohamad Hammoud, was, by age 15, serving in the group's militia.
Hammoud's entry into America was typical. Refused a visa by the U.S. Embassy in Syria, he made his way to Venezuela, bought a fake visa, and in 1992 flew to New York, where he demanded asylum, then promptly disappeared. He followed a family member to Charlotte, where he ended up delivering pizzas for Domino's.
Before long, Hammoud and his colleagues got into tobacco smuggling, investigators say. What began as a side job soon turned into a huge moneymaker. Each week, they packed three to four minivans with cigarettes, each load worth some $13,000. By the time of their arrest, the smugglers had raked in some $8 million--nearly a quarter of that pure profit. Officials don't know how much money the group funneled to Hezbollah but believe it was more than $100,000.
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