Word: hammoud
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...Prior to September 11th, Hizballah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group," FBI Director Robert Mueller said last year. Just three weeks ago, two alleged Hizballah soldiers were among several individuals indicted in Detroit - also in a cigarette smuggling scheme that the government said is linked to Hammoud's. Prosecutors allege that they, too, were raising money for Hizballah. And TIME has learned that the FBI is investigating the activities of hundreds of suspected Hizballah members or sympathizers in the U.S. - including several dozen ?migr?s believed to be hard-core Hizballah believers. The investigation is spread over many...
...start again, U.S. officials dread their professionalism, training and discipline - and their penchant for particularly deadly suicide attacks. "They're military trained. They keep their military skills up," said Chris Swecker, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Charlotte office and a key player in the Hammoud case...
...Hammoud case is auspicious because it has been the first of its kind under a 1996 anti-terror law that outlawed giving material support to terror groups, such as an uncertain amount of smuggling profits that Hammoud was proved to have sent abroad. "The case was about fund-raising, but there was enough evidence seized in the course of the investigation to justify a legitimate concern about terrorism in general," U.S. attorney for Charlotte Bob Conrad tells TIME of the charges his office brought against Hammoud and two dozen or so others, including his brother and several Americans. "A group...
...Hammoud case began innocuously enough in 1995. Local sheriff's detective Bob Fromme, working off-duty as a security guard at JR Tobacco Warehouse in Statesville, N.C., grew suspicious when he saw a group of Middle Eastern men repeatedly buying hundreds of cartons of cigarettes apiece. Local prosecutors in tobacco-friendly North Carolina weren't interested, but Fromme persuaded the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to investigate. Just as they were poised to bring charges, the FBI swooped in and took over - linking the smuggling operation to the Hizballah cell that Hammoud allegedly headed...
...using fund-raising investigations like the one in Charlotte to nab operatives like Hammoud while trying to roll up any possible plans for violence. As FBI agent Swecker put it: "These fund-raising cases were good ways to get in and see what they were doing. And if we had to wait and see what they were doing - I mean that'd be way too late." So far, neither Hammoud's gang nor other Hizballah operatives are accused of planning specific attacks here. But Conrad noted that the government filed an affidavit citing a confidential source who said that...