WASHINGTON — The Navy has seized a boat carrying nearly two tons of hashish in the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said Friday, in what could be some of the first hard evidence of al-Qaida links to drug smuggling.
The guided missile destroyer USS Decatur intercepted the 40-foot boat Monday. Aboard were a dozen men, three of them believed to have al-Qaida connections, and 3,780 pounds of hashish, the Navy said Friday.
"This is the first empirical evidence I’ve seen that conclusively links al-Qaida with the drug trade," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at RAND, a think tank that often does work for the Pentagon.
The Decatur seized the boat, a wooden vessel called a dhow, near the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow part of the Persian Gulf where it opens into the Arabian Sea. The area is a known smuggling route for al-Qaida, the Navy said.
The drugs are worth between $8 million and $10 million, the Navy said.
Terrorism experts and government officials long have said they believe that al-Qaida makes money through criminal enterprises including the drug trade. A United Nations panel reported last month, for example, that al-Qaida had financed some of its operations through drug trafficking.
But Hoffman said Monday’s seizure was the first indication that al-Qaida was smuggling hashish, a drug made from the resin of marijuana plants that has a long history in the Middle East.
Smuggling drugs is attractive to al-Qaida because of the huge profit margins involved, said Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury Department official involved in tracking terrorist financing.
"One of the things we learned over the past two years about al-Qaida is it’s a very adaptable organization with respect not only to its terrorist activities but also its mechanisms for raising money," said Gurule, now a law professor at Notre Dame. "This isn’t something that is a surprise, but it’s something we should be prepared to address."
The Decatur is part of the Navy’s effort to crack down on smuggling of drugs, weapons, oil and terrorists in the Persian Gulf.
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