Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Prince Charles and Saudi-backed terrorism: Demand answers!

In response to the recent terror attacks by ISIS in Paris, Lebanon, and the Sinai Peninsula, among other places, Citizens Electoral Council of Australia National Secretary Craig Isherwood today stated from his party’s headquarters in Melbourne:

“ISIS has now boasted that they will hit Washington, D.C., while the head of MI5 has been proclaiming for months that a mass slaughter on the streets of the UK is inevitable. Dire warnings of terrorist attacks have also been issued here in Australia.

“We must therefore take the war against ISIS into entirely new dimensions. Rather than cowering in terror, waiting for new eruptions of mass slaughter in which you or your loved ones may be the next to die, you as an individual citizen in Australia or in the UK have a personal responsibility to do something to bring this mayhem to a halt.

“The first new dimension of an actual war on terror would be to root out the financial and logistical support provided to ISIS by megabanks in London and on Wall Street, without whose assistance ISIS would begin to wither away. At their 15-16 November summit in Turkey, Russian President Vladimir Putin provided his fellow G20 heads of state with concrete evidence of the sources of terrorist financing, he said, ‘from 40 countries … including some G20 countries’. And UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn demanded in Parliament on 18 November that PM David Cameron slap on ‘sanctions against those banks and companies and, if necessary, countries which turn a blind eye to those who do dealings with ISIL, who assist them in their work.’ Corbyn has repeatedly named Saudi Arabia as a centrepiece of this apparatus.

“Besides Saudi Arabia”, Isherwood continued, “an excellent place to start is the City of London’s HSBC, the largest British bank, which is 5 per cent owned by the British government through the Royal Bank of Scotland. HSBC has laundered probably hundreds of billions of dollars of drug money and has maintained intimate financial links to Saudi banks which finance Al-Qaeda, as well as to leading personnel of MI5 and MI6, agencies deeply implicated in building this terror machine in the first place.¹

“But a second new dimension of counteraction against the terrorists is more important still. And that is to break up the protection which political establishments in the West—notably in the UK and the USA—have granted to the orchestrators and financiers of ISIS: Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with help from their friends in Turkey. In this regard, as the CEC and our friends at the US weekly Executive Intelligence Review have documented, the key figure is Prince Charles, because over the past three decades no other member of the state leadership of any country has been more intimately associated with the foremost Saudi orchestrators of international terrorism than he.

“Therefore, you as a citizen of Australia or the UK should review the public-domain evidence I provide below, which is drawn from the dossiers compiled by the CEC and EIR. Then demand that your MP stand up in Parliament and raise the ‘unthinkable’ questions they have hitherto been too cowardly to mention.² These are but a few essentials of what is known about the role of Charles and the Crown in creating and orchestrating terrorism. Much more evidence, and investigative leads, may be found in the links provided.”

Al-Yamamah and Al-Qaeda/ISIS

Crucial to the financing of modern international terrorism is the infamous Al-Yamamah arms deal struck between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan in 1985, which is still running and which by 2013 had generated an estimated US$160 billion³. This gigantic slush fund was used to finance the rise of first Al-Qaeda and then ISIS. The later phases of Al-Yamamah—the richest single contract in British history—were negotiated by Charles himself during 12 official visits to Saudi Arabia and innumerable private ones. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office investigated Al-Yamamah in 2003-06 for corruption and bribes on a gigantic scale, but then-PM Tony Blair suddenly shut down the probe, claiming that “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is vitally important for our country in terms of counter-terrorism”.

The real orchestrator of the cover-up, however, was not Blair, but Charles. A glimpse of that reality appeared in the 2005 book, Saudi Babylon, a chronicle of the Saudi Kingdom’s imprisonment and torture of Sandy Mitchell in 2000. The book provided a detailed account of an extraordinary April 2003 meeting at New Scotland Yard:

“Prince Charles’s relationships with prominent House of Saud members have created serious problems and obstacles to UK agencies investigating claims of Saudi financing of international terrorism, according to Special Branch sources [emphasis added]. The delicacy and sensitivity of Prince Charles’s friendships was raised during a meeting at New Scotland Yard in April 2003. Families of the victims of 9/11 had filed a lawsuit accusing some members of the House of Saud, notably defence minister Prince Sultan and the new UK Ambassador, Prince Turki, of supporting Al-Qaeda in the past. Their lawyers were in Europe investigating allegations that senior Saudi royals had backed Islamic charities, run by the government, which funded the 9/11 hijackers.

“The meeting at New Scotland Yard was attended by detective chief inspector Stephen Ratcliffe, the Special Branch officer in charge of tracking terrorism financing; Peter Clarke, national director of countering terrorist funding; Robert Randall, a police liaison officer; and lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims. Alan Gerson, a lawyer for 9/11 relatives, outlined their case and said that the Saudi royal family were put on notice in 1999 by US National Security Council (NSC) officials in Riyadh that funds for Al-Qaeda came from Saudi. ‘There were similar warnings to the Saudis in London as well,’ said Ratcliffe, ‘although some of our regulatory agencies were not always up to scratch in tracing the money.’

“‘Well, have the UK authorities uncovered anything to show that charities run by some members of the Saudi royal family were channelling money to the terrorists?’ asked Gerson.

“Ratcliffe looked hesitant and a little sheepish. ‘Our ability to investigate the Saudis is very limited,’ he said. He then paused, looked across at a photograph of Prince Charles on the wall, raised his eyebrows and smiled knowingly without saying a word. ‘He did not say anything but the message was crystal clear when he looked at the picture,’ said a police officer who was present. ‘It was Prince Charles’s special relationship with the Saudis which was a problem. He gave no other reason why they were restricted.’”⁴

One need not rely solely on Hollingsworth’s account of Charles’s intimacy with Saudi kingpins of international terrorism. The two Saudi influentials named in that New Scotland Yard meeting, Al-Yamamah’s Prince Bandar and Prince Turki, for instance, were two of only eight foreign royals whom Charles invited to his 2005 wedding with Camilla Parker-Bowles, while Bandar biographer William Simpson reported that Bandar’s relationship with Charles was long-standing and “very close”. As for Bandar’s brother-in-law Prince Turki, he headed Saudi General Intelligence from 1979 to 2001 during which time he created Al-Qaeda. He suddenly resigned from that post only 10 days before 9/11, and though featured in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit and subsequently named by a convicted 9/11 conspirator as one of its main orchestrators, Turki went on to become Saudi Ambassador to the UK (2003-05) and to the USA (2005-06).

Charles’s Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: Terror Central

One of Charles’s main “private charities” is his Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), in which he has long been the Patron. The British press habitually refers to Charles’s “fascination with Islam”, to explain his tightness with the OCIS and related activities. Already some three decades ago, Charles convinced his good friend, the now-deceased Saudi King Fahd, to finance the construction of a network of mosques in the UK, which was soon to house the first phases of terrorist infrastructure where the Wahhabist radicals were trained, such as the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque in north London. Among other atrocities, Finsbury personnel were involved in the 7 July 2005 subway bombings (“7/7”) in London which killed 52 and wounded 700 more, and in the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. In a US courtroom in 2014, Finsbury leader Abu Hamza al-Masri stated in his defence that he had been working for MI5 all along.⁵ Consider the present or past board members and the major financiers of Charles’s OCIS, virtually all of whom have been implicated in financing, orchestrating or advocating terrorism.⁶

Prince Bandar bin Sultan contributed an estimated US$13-24.4 million to the OCIS in the early 1990s, according to various accounts, and arranged for then-Saudi King Fahd to kick in another $32.4 million in 1997. While Saudi ambassador to the United States, Bandar provided financing and logistical support to the 9/11 terrorists.⁷

Prince Turki bin Faisal, a member of the OCIS Board of Trustees and chairman of its Strategy Advisory Committee, has been named as financier and coordinator of 9/11.

Prince Mohamed bin Faisal, a brother of Prince Turki and known as a “pioneer of Islamic banking”, was named by the 9/11 families in a lawsuit.

Abdullah Omar Naseef co-founded the OCIS and chairs its Board of Trustees. In the 1980s, Naseef co-created Maktab al-Khidamat, the backbone organisation of the Arab-Afghan mujahedin in Afghanistan, which in 1989 changed its name to Al-Qaeda. He, too, has been named a financier of terrorism in a 9/11 families’ lawsuit. After Queen Elizabeth II herself granted the OCIS a Royal charter in May 2011, Naseef exulted, “This is very good news. This shows that the British government, the Queen, and the whole state are very much aware that the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies is doing very well to make relations between the Islamic world and the Western world closer and to bring Islam and its role into the international arena.”

Yusuf al-Qaradawi was a board member of the OCIS from 1985 until 2006. Qatar-based spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he has issued fatwas for the overthrow and assassination of Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad, and in July 2012 threatened the assassination of Egyptian leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, now President of Egypt. In a 30 January 2009 broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV al-Qaradawi proclaimed that “Hitler Put the Jews in Their Place”: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them.”

The Bin Laden family, besides the notoriety brought by its famous member Osama bin Laden, was among the Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti private donors of some $70 million to the OCIS, endowing its “Mohammed bin Laden chair”, named after Osama’s father. Osama had been recruited by Prince Turki to set up the Maktab al-Khidamat network, the future Al-Qaeda.

International terrorism and the Anglo-American Empire

The ultimate enemy in the “war on terror” is beyond the foot-soldiers of ISIS; it is those who created Al-Qaeda and ISIS. They are the powers typified by HSBC and the other megabanks of the City of London and their junior partners on Wall Street, the “informal financial empire”, in the words of British imperial strategists themselves, which has replaced the genocidal formal British Empire of the 19th century. This new form of empire still sits above nation-states, which it forced to bail out its megabanks in 2008. Now, faced with an impending, far greater global financial crash, this empire is unleashing mass terrorism, while simultaneously seeking ever more draconian legislation, including “shoot-to-kill” authorisation and sweeping powers of surveillance. The purpose? To establish police states, in order to control populations who are already rebelling against the vicious austerity of globalisation, a rebellion typified by the stunning election of Jeremy Corbyn to head the UK Labour Party.

The history of the creation of Al-Qaeda and now ISIS for this purpose, over the last several decades, is chronicled in a 101-page dossier of articles from Executive Intelligence Review magazine, “9/11, ISIS, and the Anglo-American/Saudi Terror Nexus”.

An actual war on terror must include the two essential measures outlined here:

Beginning with Prince Charles, the Western sponsors of Al-Qaeda, ISIS et al. must be named, and then hauled before national governments to be interrogated; and
The London and Wall Street megabanks which are supporting ISIS and forcing brutal austerity upon the populations of the world must be broken up by banking separation laws such as the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall legislation, passed by the US Congress in 1933, which protect normal lending from insatiable financial speculators. Such legislation now has wide and rapidly growing support in the US Congress, and missed passage in the UK in 2013 by only nine votes in the House of Lords and 49 votes in the House of Commons, during debate of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill 2013.

Therefore, if you want to defeat terrorism, as well as reverse the policies of genocidal austerity, you must do your part: Call your MP and demand that he or she act to summon Prince Charles for questioning on suspicion of being a terrorist kingpin, and demand that they enact Glass-Steagall legislation. And forward this press release to all of your friends and associates and urge them to do likewise.

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Footnotes

Glen Isherwood, “Who is Sponsoring International Terrorism?”, speech at the 28-29 March 2015 CEC international conference “The World Land-Bridge: Peace on Earth, Good Will towards All Men”, documented the complicity of MI5 and MI6 in this process.

US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “US Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History”, a Majority and Minority Staff Report released 17 July 2012, set forth evidence that HSBC had conducted the largest money-laundering and terrorist-financing scheme in history, for which it was fined in December 2012 a mere US$2 billion—a slap on the wrist for this multinational behemoth with 2011 profits of nearly $22 billion on some $2.5 trillion in assets. The Executive Summary of the Senate report’s chapter on Terrorism Financing noted, “HSBC has been active in Saudi Arabia, conducting substantial banking activities through affiliates as well as doing business with Saudi Arabia’s largest private financial institution, Al Rajhi Bank. After the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, evidence began to emerge that Al Rajhi Bank and some of its owners had links to financing organisations associated with terrorism, including evidence that the bank’s key founder was an early financial benefactor of Al-Qaeda. In 2005, HSBC announced internally that its affiliates should sever ties with Al Rajhi Bank, but then reversed itself four months later, leaving the decision up to each affiliate. HSBC Middle East, among other HSBC affiliates, continued to do business with the bank.” Even the New York Times editorialised 11 December 2012, under the headline “Too Big to Indict”, that the failure of the US authorities to indict HSBC “on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system”, was “a dark day for the rule of law.” Citing prosecutorial findings that “HSBC had … moved tainted money from Mexican drug cartels and Saudi banks with ties to terrorist groups”, the Times noted the view among prosecutors and Congressional investigators, “that senior HSBC officials might have been complicit in the illegal activity….” Subcommittee chairman Sen. Carl Levin emphasised that although his committee had focused on HSBC, the latter was only the most notorious of many other London and Wall Street giants doing the same thing.

Ramtanu Maitra, “HSBC Funding Was Behind the Terror in Bangladesh, Mumbai”, Executive Intelligence Review, 27 July 2012 gives a snapshot of HSBC’s global activities, including the financing of terrorism.

Exemplary of HSBC’s links to British SIS, are the careers of Jonathan Evans (Lord Evans of Weardale), who headed MI5 in 2007-13, and career diplomat and top MI6 figure Sherard Cowper-Coles. Lord Weardale, appointed head of MI5 after serving as its top expert on Al-Qaeda, joined the board of HSBC Holdings soon after his retirement from MI5 in 2013; he had to resign his post at the National Crime Agency the same year because of a “perceived conflict of interest” with his HSBC job.

As UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2003-06, Cowper-Coles was instrumental in forcing Britain’s Serious Fraud Office to drop its investigation of BAE Systems and the Al-Yamamah deal. He later went to work for BAE. Today Cowper-Coles is senior advisor to HSBC’s group chairman and the group chief executive, and chairs the Saudi-British Society.

Robert Barwick, “Amidst New Scrutiny of Charles’s Saudi Ties, British Royals Feel Heat Over Diana’s Assassination”, EIR, 13 February 2015, reports on questions raised about a singular moment in Cowper-Coles’s earlier career, by Australian investigator John Morgan in his 11-volume compendium of evidence in the deaths of Princess Diana, Dodi al Fayed and Henri Paul in a Paris car crash on 31 August 1997. Cowper-Coles apparently arrived to assume the post of MI6 station chief in France, operating from Britain’s embassy in Paris, on the very day Diana died.

The CEC’s ongoing exposure of this reality no doubt was a contributing motive for Charles and his entourage to shut down CEC public organising in Albany, Western Australia during Charles’s recent visit there, under the pretext of “anti-terror measures”.

“Al-Yamamah: Financing Terrorism”, EIR, 16 August 2013.

Mark Hollingsworth with Sandy Mitchell, Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2005).

Glen Isherwood conference presentation, cited in note 1.

Greater detail is provided in Glen Isherwood’s conference presentation, cited in note 1.

Jeffrey Steinberg, “The Strategic Showdown with Russia and China”, presentation at the 28-29 March 2015 CEC international conference “The World Land-Bridge. Peace on Earth, Good Will towards All Men”.

Click here for a free dossier compiled from Executive Intelligence Review reports documenting the roots of modern “Islamist” terrorism: ISIS, 9/11, and the Anglo-American/Saudi Terror Nexus.

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