Global Policy Forum

by Douglas Farah

The terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden has reaped millions of dollars in the past three years from the illicit sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials and two sources with direct knowledge of events.

Diamond dealers working directly with men named by the FBI as key operatives in bin Laden's al Qaeda network bought gems from the rebels at below-market prices and sold them for large profits in Europe. Investigators in the United States and Europe are still trying to determine how much money al Qaeda derived from its dealings with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), but they estimated the amount to be in the millions.

Since July, the sources said, the diamond dealers have changed their tactics, buying far more diamonds than usual and paying premium prices for them. Investigators said that is a strong indication that al Qaeda, perhaps anticipating its accounts would be frozen after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, sought to protect its money by sinking it into gemstones, a commodity that can be easily hidden, holds its value and remains almost untraceable.

"When prices go up and supply goes up, it means someone is seeking to launder or hide cash, and we believe that is the case here," a U.S. official said. "Diamonds don't set off alarms at airports, they can't be sniffed by dogs, they are easy to hide, and are highly convertible to cash. It makes perfect sense."

U.S. and European intelligence officials, overwhelmed after Sept. 11 and with very few agents in West Africa, said they realized only recently how important the diamond flow was to fund al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

"I now believe that to cut off al Qaeda funds and laundering activities you have to cut off the diamond pipeline," said a European investigator. "We are talking about millions and maybe tens of millions of dollars in profits and laundering."

The Diamond Dealers

The diamonds are mined by RUF rebels, who became infamous during Sierra Leone's civil war for hacking off the arms and legs of civilians and abducting thousands of children and forcing them to fight as combatants. The country's alluvial diamond fields, some of the richest in the world, were the principal prize in the civil war, and they have been under RUF control for the past four years.

Small packets of diamonds, often wrapped in rags or plastic sheets, are taken by senior RUF commanders across the porous Liberian border to Monrovia, according to sources. There, at a safe house protected by the Liberian government, the diamonds are exchanged for briefcases of cash brought by diamond dealers who fly several times a month from Belgium to Monrovia, where they are escorted by special state security through customs and immigration control.

The diamond dealers are selected by Ibrahim Bah, a Libyan-trained former Senegalese rebel and the RUF's principal diamond dealer, the sources said. The buyers' identities are known only to Bah and a few others.

Bah's contacts and sympathies were forged on the battlefield, according to intelligence reports and sources who know him well. After fighting with the Casamance separatist movement in Senegal in the 1970s, Bah trained in Libya under the protection of Col. Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. Like bin Laden, he spent several years in the early 1980s fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Bah then joined the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia to fight Israeli forces in southern Lebanon before returning to Libya at the end of the 1980s. In Libya, Bah met and trained several men who would go on to lead rebellions in West Africa, including Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone, the RUF's founder. Bah himself later fought in both Liberia and Sierra Leone.

According to intelligence sources and two people who have worked with him, Bah now acts as a conduit between senior RUF commanders and the buyers from both al Qaeda and Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim organization linked to Lebanese activists who have kidnapped numerous Americans, hijacked airplanes and carried out car bomb attacks on U.S. installations in Beirut.

Bah, who lives in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, declined through intermediaries to be interviewed for this article. In the past, he has refused to talk to U.N. investigators probing the region's weapons-for-diamonds trade.

Senior RUF officials, who are overseeing the disarmament of the rebel movement as part of a U.N.-brokered peace agreement, said this week in response to a query from The Washington Post that they were shocked by allegations of Bah's dealings with terrorist organizations and would thoroughly investigate the matter.

Virtually Untraceable Funds

How much money terrorist organizations made in diamond sales brokered by Bah is difficult to ascertain. A U.N. panel of experts estimated the market value of RUF "blood diamonds" sold in 1999 at about $75 million. But since the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF agreed to a cease-fire last year, diamond mining has greatly accelerated.

Sources in the diamond trade estimate that the RUF receives less than 10 percent of market value for the diamonds it sells, paid mostly in the form of weapons, food and medicine. Taylor, who is now Liberia's president, receives a commission on each transaction in Monrovia, and Bah and the other brokers share the rest, according to sources involved in the dealings. Taylor repeatedly has denied involvement in illicit diamond dealings.

"Even if only 10 percent went to terrorist organizations, you are talking about millions of dollars in virtually untraceable funds, every year," said a European investigator. "That is enough to keep a lot of people going."

European and American intelligence sources have long known that Hezbollah has raised significant amounts of money in West Africa through the largely Shiite Muslim Lebanese communities in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo. There are an estimated 120,000 Lebanese in West Africa, mostly involved in import-export businesses.

"Hezbollah is active in all these countries and are deeply involved in many businesses across the region," said one European official tracking the movement. "It is only a small part of the Lebanese community that is sympathetic, but many people contribute to them just to keep Hezbollah off their backs."

For at least 20 years, Hezbollah had also raised some cash through the sale of diamonds from Sierra Leone, intelligence sources said. Bah, they said, was long suspected of brokering diamond deals through buyers connected to Hezbollah, assisted by sympathetic Lebanese businessmen across the region.

After Sept. 11, U.S. officials began focusing more intently on the West African diamond network. Transcripts from court cases against al Qaeda members contained evidence that the network has people with expertise in the diamond business and who previously dabbled in the gemstone trade in Tanzania.

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