ASHCROFT: DRUGS LINKED TO TERRORISM

Two Separate Drug Deals Allegedly Tied To al-Qaida, AUC

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials announced charges Wednesday involving alleged
plots to sell drugs to finance weapons purchases for Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaida organization and a Colombian paramilitary group.

The separate cases show the threat to national security from the "toxic
combination of drugs and terrorism," Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

One set of charges involves a plot by four people, two of them
Houston-based, to trade $25 million in cocaine and cash for a huge cache of
weapons to be sent to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC,
as the 8,000-member paramilitary group is known by its initials in Spanish.

U.S. authorities said the four suspects believed they were going to trade
the money and cocaine for 9,000 AK-47s and other assault rifles; grenade
launchers and nearly 300,000 grenades; 300 pistols; shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft missiles; and about 53 million rounds of ammunition.

In the second case, three people are charged with trying to sell heroin and
hashish to buy four shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for the
al-Qaida terror network. An indictment says the al-Qaida link was provided
by the suspects themselves.

Top U.S. law enforcement officials hailed the arrests in both cases as a
serious blow against terrorism.

"We have learned and we have demonstrated that drug traffickers and
terrorists work out of the same jungle, they plan in the same cave, and
they train in the same desert," said Asa Hutchinson, director of the Drug
Enforcement Agency.

In the Houston case, called "Operation White Terror," undercover agents
videotaped meetings in London, the Virgin Islands and Panama City at which
the defendants allegedly discussed exchanging drugs and cash for weapons
headed for the AUC, Ashcroft said.

The AUC is the umbrella group for right-wing paramilitaries blamed for most
of Colombia's massacres and hundreds of assassinations.

The four were charged in Houston with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and
conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist
organization. The charges could carry up to life in prison, Ashcroft said.

In the San Diego case, Ashcroft released an indictment against two
Pakistanis and one U.S. citizen originally from India who have been held
since Sept. 20 in Hong Kong. They allegedly sought to sell 600 kilograms of
heroin and five metric tons of hashish in the San Diego area and use the
money to buy Stinger missiles.

The three suspects in custody in Hong Kong were identified as Syed Mustajab
Shah and Muhammed Abid Afridi, both of Pakistan, and Ilyas Ali of Minneapolis.