Content area
Full text
KEYWORDS: organized crime, terrorist financing, Hezbollah, Irish Republican Army, fraud, hybrid terrorist, cigarette smuggling, black hole syndrome
TARGET AUDIENCE: Criminal investigators
PROGRAM LEVEL: Basic
DISCLOSURE: The authors have nothing to disclose.
PREREQUISITES: None
This article explores the symbiotic relationship between organized crime and terrorist organizations including when there is evidence that such relationships have become indistinguishable.The authors examine the symbiotic relationships detected within the United States of America and other areas of the world. Both groups focus on cigarette diversion, narcotics, and illegal immigrant smuggling. Specific groups such as Hezbollah, the Irish Republican Army, and other crime-terror organizations are used to illustrate these collaborations.This article outlines tools that can be used to identify crime-terror nexus points. Recommendations derived from the importance of using multi-agency working groups coupled with the emerging importance of forensic examiners in the fight against the crime-terror nexus are offered.
Introduction
"They wouldn't be if I had enough money and explosives."
- Ramzi Yousef, Terrorist
When the FBI transported Ramzi Yousef by helicopter over Manhattan following his capture for the 1995 bombing of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, an FBI agent pulled up Yousef 's blindfold and pointed out that the lights of the World Trade Center were still glowing. "They're still standing," the FBI agent stated. Yousef is reported to have responded, "They wouldn't be if I had enough money and explosives" (Dickey, 2009).
The problems of organized crime and terrorism were often considered separate phenomena prior to 9/1 1 (Shelley, n.d.). Security studies, the military, and law enforcement seminars discussed the emerging threat of transnational organized crime or terrorism, but the important links between the two were rarely made. Part of the reason for the lack of linkage may be due to the fact that organized crime and terrorism are usually viewed as two different forms of crime. Organized crime's main focus is economic profit, while terrorism is said to be motivated by ideological aims and a desire for political change (Bovenkerk & Chakra, n.d.). Not connecting the two organizations may be realistic given that Yousef indicated that the lack of financial and logistical support prevented him from running a high-scale terrorist operation with a bigger bomb than what he had used in 1 993 (Levitt, 2002).
...