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| Open Borders and Terrorism |
tomder55 |
03/04/05 |
Dearborn resident helped terror group
Man admits he hosted meetings at his home to raise funds for militants based in Middle East.
By David Shepardson / The Detroit News
DEARBORN -- A Dearborn man pleaded guilty Tuesday to providing material support to Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organization.
Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, admitted to hosting meetings at his Dearborn home during Ramadan in 2002 and allowing a Lebanese man to solicit donations from people there for Hezbollah.
The U.S. government considers Hezbollah, a Lebanese group known as Party of God, to be a terrorist organization. The group's goals, the government says, include the eradication of "Western imperialism" from the Middle East.
Hezbollah has conducted many high-profile terrorist attacks, including the killing of a Marine lieutenant in 1989.
Under the plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Kourani faces no more than five years in prison. Under the original charge, he faced up to 15 years. He will be sentenced June 14 by U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland.
Federal agents found thousands of dollars and evidence of wire transfers when they searched Kourani in May 2003. He was then charged with housing an illegal immigrant.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Kourani bribed a Mexican consular official in Beirut to get a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a traveling companion then paid another man in Mexico to be smuggled across the southern U.S. border Feb. 4, 2001, the government said.
Kourani received training in weaponry, spy craft and counterintelligence in Lebanon and Iran, the government said. It also said Kourani was "a member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah."
His brother is Hezbollah's chief of military security in southern Lebanon and oversaw Kourani's activities.
Kourani, a carpenter, has been in custody since May 2003, when federal agents searched his house on Argyle Street in Dearborn and charged him with harboring an illegal immigrant. Kourani pleaded guilty, served six months in a federal prison and was awaiting deportation in an immigration facility when he was indicted in 2004 on the terror charge.
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This is at least the 3rd article I've found this year about potential terrorists gaining access to the U.S. through the border with Mexico. Meanwhile Congress passed the 9-11 Commissions recommendations almost verbadum EXCEPT for their warnings about the threat from the lack of border security .[It is elemental to border security to know who is coming into the country. Today more than 9 million people are in the United States outside the legal immigrationsystem. We must also be able to monitor and respond to entrances between our ports of entry, working with Canada and Mexico as much as possible.]. |
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