Montreal quintuplets' father tied to terrorists Pleads guilty to shipping materiel to Hezbollah
Stewart Bell National Post August 10, 2005 A Montreal businessman who became a national media sensation in the 1990s when he fathered Quebec's first quintuplets pleaded guilty in an Arkansas courtroom yesterday to attempting to ship military equipment to the terrorist group Hezbollah. Naji Antoine Abi Khalil, a Lebanese-born Canadian, admitted he had accepted a payoff in exchange for agreeing to falsify shipping records and send night-vision goggles and infrared aiming devices for M-16 rifles to Hezbollah agents in Athens. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years for attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and two related offences. He is also facing up to 20 years for a separate money-laundering conviction in July. Hezbollah, the so-called ''Party of God,'' is the Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist faction that pioneered suicide car bombings in Beirut and continues to attack Israelis from its stronghold in southern Lebanon. After his wife, Lina, gave birth to five babies at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal in April, 1992, Khalil became a fixture in the Canadian press, featured in stories with headlines such as ''Quints Are Well But Dad Dazed'' and ''Quints' Mom Wants To Sleep.'' The story of the immigrant family was published in a book titled La Merveilleuse histoire des quintuplets (The Wonderful Story of the Quintuplets). Canadians showered them with gifts, offering jobs, clothing and free rent. Living on welfare when the quints were born, Khalil set up his own import-export company, New Line Services. But by 2001, police in several jurisdictions were investigating the Canadian as part of an international money-laundering probe. He allegedly told a government witness that he travelled the world collecting money and laundering it through a Lebanese bank used by the Russia mob. Then in 2004, he was snared in an FBI sting operation. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement released yesterday that on May 17, 2004, Khalil flew from Montreal to New York to meet a man who claimed he was trying to export stolen electronics but who was actually a co-operating witness working with the FBI. At the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan, the witness asked Khalil if he would ship night vision goggles to Hezbollah. Khalil agreed, unaware that law enforcement agents were watching the exchange on video from an adjoining room. The witness then introduced Khalil to an undercover FBI agent who brought him and a business partner, Tomer ''Tommy'' Grinberg, an Israeli citizen, to a storage locker to pick up the materiel. Khalil tried on the night-vision goggles before loading them into a minivan. After accepting US$2,500 as a down payment for his services, Khalil was arrested. On June 16, 2004, he was charged with three counts: attempting to provide support to Hezbollah; attempting to contribute goods to Hezbollah; and conspiring to export military equipment without a permit. Grinberg has also pleaded guilty. ''There are many types of criminal activity. Here it was money laundering that may also be connected to support of Islamic extremism,'' Bud Cummins, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said following yesterday's guilty plea. C National Post 2005 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12htes35k/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1123686494/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
