DRUG RING, TERRORISTS LINKED

DEA Ties Meth Sales To Middle East Extremist Groups

WASHINGTON (AP)- Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first
time that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling
proceeds to such Middle East terrorist groups as Hezbollah.

Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a series of
raids in January indicates that a methamphetamine drug operation in the
Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money
back to terrorist groups, officials said.

"There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that
for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in
part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East," DEA
administrator Asa Hutchinson said.

DEA officials said the men, most of whom were indicted on drug charges
after their January arrests, were smuggling large quantities of the
chemical pseudoephedrine from Canada.

Officials said the smuggling went primarily through Chicago and Detroit and
involved several men with ties to Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and other Middle
Eastern countries. There is no evidence any of the money was connected to
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

Pseudoephedrine is used in some cold and allergy medications. It is an
essential ingredient in the creation of methamphetamine.

The U.S. drug ring was reselling pseudoephedrine to Mexican-based drug
operations in the western United States that used it to produce
methamphetamine, authorities said.

The Middle Eastern men then were diverting some of the proceeds from the
pseudoephedrine sales back to the Middle East to accounts authorities have
begun to connect to terrorist groups, DEA officials said. Some of the
connections involved the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, and some of
the money has been traced to accounts in Lebanon and Yemen, officials said.

DEA officials said authorities don't know how much money was funneled from
the drug sales to the terrorist groups but said the pseudoephedrine sales
amounted to millions of dollars.