Qatari Banker who financed 9/11 mastermind now funding terrorists in Syria and Iraq

Qatari Banker who financed 9/11 mastermind now funding terrorists in Syria and Iraq.(Telegraph).

A terrorist financier from Qatar is at the centre of a jihadi network linking him to al-Qaeda fighters in Syria and Iraq.

An al-Qaeda financier jailed for his role in funding the mastermind behind 9/11 is once again raising money for Islamist terrorists after being freed by the Qatari authorities, The Telegraph can disclose.

Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy - a Qatari citizen who was said to have provided 'financial support' for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - was jailed for terrorist offences in 2008 but released after only six months.He is now accused of funding Islamist terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq.

New documents released by the US Treasury disclose links between Al-Subaiy and a terror financier accused of bankrolling an al-Qaeda offshoot that plotted to blow up airliners using toothpaste tube bombs.

The American military thwarted the plot in an air strike on the group’s headquarters in Syria just over a week ago.

The case highlights growing concern over the apparent failure of Qatar, one of the richest nations in the world, to crack down on financial terrorist networks in the country.

Prominent critics are now calling for greater scrutiny of Qatar’s connections to global terrorism with the threat of sanctions if it fails to tackle the problem.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, has warned that Qatar “must choose their friends or live with the consequences” while Professor Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said: “The time has come to draw the line under funding by the Gulf States coming into the UK. It is well known that to find the terrorists you have to follow the money and at the moment it seems to be coming from Qatar.” A new report to be published next month by a US security think tank is understood to have identified 20 Qataris as senior terrorist financiers and facilitators. Ten of those Qataris are already designated as terrorists on official US and UN blacklists.

According to the latest US documents, Umar al-Qatari “has raised funds for al-Qaeda over the Internet and coordinated with ‘al-Qaeda financier’ Khalifa Muhammad Turki al Subaiy to transfer ‘tens of thousands of euros’ to al Qaeda and its senior leaders”. Al-Qatari is currently detained in a jail in Lebanon after being arrested in 2012 prior to boarding a flight to Qatar while in possession of “thousands of dollars intended for al-Qaeda”.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, has defended his country against allegations of funding terrorism. "We don't fund extremists," the Emir told CNN last week, "If you talk about certain movements, especially in Syria and Iraq, we all consider them terrorist movements.

"I know that in America and some countries they look at some movements as terrorist movements. ... But there are differences. There are differences that some countries and some people that any group which comes from Islamic background are terrorists. And we don't accept that." Read the full story here.