BUSTED METH RING MAY HAVE TERRORIST CONNECTIONS

Federal authorities have charged 121 people, including three in Houston, in
a nationwide crackdown on a ring that allegedly supplied a drug used to
manufacture methamphetamine.

The ring may have links to terrorist organizations, an FBI spokesman said.

Authorities made 67 arrests and issued 54 arrest warrants in Chicago,
Detroit, Cleveland and other cities, Drug Enforcement Administration
officials said.

Arrested in Houston were Osamah Yacoub, 33; Sarah Yacoub, 33, and Mohammad
Aoun, 37. They will be transferred to Phoenix, where the cases are being
prosecuted, a local DEA official said.

The FBI has launched an investigation into whether terrorist groups,
including the one responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center, benefited from the ring's operations, FBI spokesman John Iannarelli
told the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram.

"We have reliable information that the proceeds were going to funding
terrorist activity," John Iannarelli told the Press-Telegram.

Authorities say the distribution ring was headed by 10 people calling
themselves "the Commission" who shipped their profits to the Middle East.
Most of those ringleaders are of Middle Eastern descent, from nations
including Jordan, Iraq and Israel.

Agents arrested 16 people in Southern California, where the drugs were
allegedly processed into methamphetamine, said agent Jose Martinez, a
spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He said seven warrants
were outstanding in Southern California.

Martinez said the alleged traffickers purchased barrels of pseudoephedrine
in Canada, smuggled them into the United States through Detroit and sold
them in California, where they were used to make methamphetamine.

Pseudoephedrine, an antihistamine found in over-the-counter cold and flu
medicine, is legal for purchase in Canada. It is a controlled substance in
the United States because the drug is an essential ingredient in producing
methamphetamine, the illegal street drug known as "speed" or "crank."

Pseudoephedrine pills can be purchased in Canada for around $200 a case and
sold to illegal methamphetamine manufacturers in the United States for
around $2,200, officials said.

Almost all the 40 million doses of pseudoephedrine seized in the raid were
found in Riverside, Calif. The drugs would be worth about $9 million if
converted into methamphetamine, Martinez said.

Agents have executed 49 search warrants, confiscated 96 cars, frozen bank
accounts and seized up to $350,000, some traced back to Middle Eastern
countries.

Agents have shut down pseudoephedrine operations at 18 companies.