Three alleged al-Qaeda associates have been charged in New York with conspiring to engage in narcoterrorism, attacking what experts say is a widespread source of illicit funding for terrorist groups, the Washington Post reports. Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman were apprehended in a sting operation coordinated by federal prosecutors in New York and Drug Enforcement Administration agents in the U.S. and Ghana.
The men allegedly met with confidential informants and agreed to move hundreds of kilograms of cocaine through West and North Africa. The conspiracy, prosecutors say, supported al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, an Algerian offshoot founded in the late 1990s with help from Osama bin Laden; and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the world’s largest supplier of cocaine, which seeks to overthrow that country’s government.