US arrests 'Afghan heroin baron'

[DoYouEverWonder]

25 April, 2005

An Afghan man regarded by the US as one of the world's most wanted heroin traffickers has been arrested, American officials have announced.

Federal prosecutors say the arrest of Bashir Noorzai on US territory will be a severe blow to the Afghan drug trade. A US federal indictment alleges Mr Noorzai has been at the centre of a multi-million dollar heroin operation.

He is expected to appear in a federal court charged with conspiring to import heroin worth $50m (£26m).

<snip>

The US attorney, David Kelly, said the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had become aware that Mr Noorzai was planning to come to America and that it had "seized the opportunity and the individual".

<snip>

But they also believe that the arrest may have wider implications, claiming that Mr Noorzai had close links with the Taleban and had used drug money to supply Islamic militants with arms and explosives.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4483469.stm


First, how did this guy get arrested on US territory? Was he arrested in Afghanistan, the US or somewhere else? How did he even get a passport if he was arrested here? Shouldn't this guy have been on a no fly list?

Second, he had close links to the Taleban? I thought the Taleban were anti-drug and had shut all the poppy growers down?

Something about this story doesn't add up.

[SouthernDem2004]

1. Well...

1) He was arrested trying to enter the country. Not all air carriers (foreign) subscribe to our list and he may have used a fake id. Not to mention we may have allowed him to get here so we could take him.

2) The Taliban use drug profits to finance their operations and the former Afghan government. The Taliban protect the drug trade for financial reasons.

[jukes]

3. OR

the DEA are a bunch of lying, headline grabbing bastards.

likewise the US Attorney's Office.

this plot reads like a hasselhoff film.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. So who issued this guy a passport?

Plus, it may be true that not all foreign carriers subscribe to our list but I doubt if any of them are flying the Afghan - US route.

[SouthernDem2004]

5. I do not think anyone is flying that route... He had to have come from

another area.

[jukes]

6. HMMM...n/t

[Frederik]

24. Not the Taliban

The Taliban got their money and other things they needed from their bosses in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, who took care of the drug business for them (Though in fact, they used to be funded be the US State Department: until 1999, "US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official", according to Michael Chussudovsky, this was when Unocal lobbied for their pipeline).

The ISI financed the Islamist guerrillas and terrorists that were trained in Afghanistan with a drug trade revenue of about $8 billion a year.

Bill Casey's CIA urged the ISI to develop poppy production in Afghanistan in the 80s, to finance the Afghan Jihad, and the ISI established hundreds of heroin-production laboratories along the Aghan-Pakistani border. One of the CIA's chief allies back then, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who was also close to Bin Laden) became and is probably still one of the big players in the Afghan opium trade. Another bigshot is Osama Bin Laden himself, who established himself in Afghanistan in 1996 and soon had an income of $1 billion a year from commissions on heroin money laundering.

The Afghan-Pakistani drug trade generated a turnover of more than $200 billion a year in the early 90s. Today, who knows, could be twice that. Most of that is recycled in in the US, so I doubt Wall Street would be too keen on catching the really big fish. I don't think the arrest of this guy will have any impact.

[Ganja Ninja]

2. Obviously this guy wasn't paying the right people.

That heroin money belongs to the Bush crime family.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. February 15, 2001 - Taliban wiped out opium production

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.

<snip>

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

http://opioids.com/afghanistan/


Like I said, something about this story just doesn't add up.

[Webster Green]

14. 2001 was a long time ago....

Poppies are an annual. They are back in full production today.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Found this interesting tidbit

in this report from the CRC for Congress last Dec. Seems the US already had Bashir Noorzai in custody and then let him go. This is a guy that they claim is one of Osama's biggest sources of funding. Odd?



Afghanistan:
Narcotics and U.S. Policy

December 7, 2004

U.S. forces reportedly detained and released both Haji Juma Khan and Haji Bashir Noorzai in late 2001 and early 2002. Press accounts state that Noorzai voluntarily provided intelligence about his Taliban and Al Qaeda colleagues during questioning at Kandahar’s airport prior to his release. 38 DEA officials reportedly were unable to question him. 39 Noorzai’s forces later surrendered a large number of weapons to coalition and Afghan authorities and provided security for Qandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai. 40 Both Khan and Noorzai currentlyremain at large, and Department of Defense officials indicate that the U.S. military is not currently pursuing them or other major figures in the Afghan opium trade.

<snip>

Haji Bashir reportedly described his time with U.S. forces in the following terms: “I spent my days and nights comfortably... There was special room for me. I was like a guest, not a prisoner.” CBS Evening News, “Newly Arrived US Army Soldiers Find it Difficult to Adjust to Life in Afghanistan’s War Zone,” February 7, 2002.


http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:N7TkT_3Ad1gJ:www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL32686.pdf+Bashir+Noorzai&hl=en&client=firefox-a

[XemaSab]

19. Oh great

He's buddies with the Taliban and al Qaeda, but he told us what he knows, so he's free to go???

[struggle4progress]

20. "I was like a guest"! eom

[NNN0LHI]

9. Taliban deny link with accused Afghan drug kingpin

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5721796&cKey=1114506319000

<snip a Taliban spokesman denied that Noorzai had ever helped them and said the accusation against him was a smokescreen to obscure the involvement of others in drugs, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said on Tuesday.

"There is no question of giving money or weapons to the Taliban by Haji Bashir," the Taliban's political spokesman, Abdul Hayee Motmaeen, told the news agency.

"The government of the Taliban struggled a lot against narcotics and had banned poppy cultivation," Motmaeen said, referring to a successful anti-drug drive the Islamic militia launched in the last year of its rule.

Drug production has flourished since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 and the United Nations says drugs and the trafficking gangs are one of the country's most serious problems as it struggles to restore stability.

[SHRED]

10. I had always heard...

that the Taliban religion forbid drug use.
That is why I was surprised to hear the news yesterday linking them with opium.
Now it sounds like more demonizing distraction by the corporate media instead.

[struggle4progress]

21. I'd count this guy part of The Agency's smuggling network, like Noriega.

They can end up in jail, if not decommissioned in some back alley.

[leesa]

11. And just when Rush found a good supplier...back to the parking lots.

[SouthernDem2004]

12. Links regarding Taliban and Herion:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1130726

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F02%2F18%2Fwafg18.xml

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1128556

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200110\For20011012f.html

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=5839

http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:83149008&refid=ink_tptd_np&skeyword=&teaser=

Alot more online....

[Zorra]

13. US territory? Is Afghanistan a US colony now? n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. I caught that too

He was in a US Territory in route to the US? Like I said, this whole story stinks of bs.

[Al-CIAda]

15. He must have been cutting in on the CIA profits from global drug running.

[chlamor]

16. The Politics of Heroin

He must of pissed off our man Armitage

[kenny blankenship]

17. What'd he do? Fail to make production quota? -nt

[Javaman]

22. Another moron* parade to mollify the masses...

Just like the "almost caught Zarqawi" story, this is more bullshit.

[Al-CIAda]

23. State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade

State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade
 -FBI Whistleblower

Sibel Edmonds- FBI Whistleblower, interview
SE: Everything – from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.
CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money –
SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.
CD: From your previous testimony and the examples I want to bring up next, it would seem that organized crime with terrorist links is really holding the reins inside powerful governments, even the American one. No?
SE: That may be, but I don't know. I didn't get high enough up on the ladder to find out. With all of this suspicious and unprecedented "state secrets" obstructionism from Ashcroft, it might seem that way, but I don't have any direct information.
CD: But what do think, within departments such as the Pentagon and the State Department. Do you suspect certain high officials may be profiting from terrorist-linked organized crime?
SE: I can't say anything specific with regards to these departments, because I didn't work for them. But as for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared.
CD: Could this apparent toleration of dangerous criminal groups in the midst possibly be interpreted to mean that American policy is driven by the "ends justify the means" philosophy?
SE: But how are the ends possibly met by such activities? To this day, I just can't see how. What is happening does not benefit 99.9 percent of Americans – just a very small elite.
I'm no expert, but from what I have personally seen I can say that our national security is being compromised every day, because important investigations are being stopped, and potentially important clues are being overlooked. It's absolutely incredible that even after 9/11, certain individuals, foreign businessmen and others, among others, are still escaping scrutiny.
Okay, perhaps talking about the pre-9/11 world they could get away with saying "we didn't know," but to continue doing so – I mean, what if we are attacked by nuclear or chemical weapons, what will be their next excuse? That "we didn't know" it could happen? Come on! I can prove they are lying, because they know."
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds-Story.htm