State Department Mulls Terror Designation for Gaza 'Aid' Ship Funder

State Department Mulls Terror Designation for Gaza 'Aid' Ship Funder

From Eye on the World: 

(FOX News) The State Department is investigating whether to designate the Turkish Muslim charity that funded and operated a Gaza-bound "aid" ship as a foreign terrorist organization, after nine people were killed aboard one of its ships in a bloody confrontation with Israeli commandos, Fox News has learned.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner told Fox News at a briefing on Wednesday that the government is looking into whether The Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), a nongovernmental organization, should be listed as a terror group.

"I believe we are looking at the IHH, but it's a long process to designate something a foreign terrorist organization and ...there's nothing to announce on that," Toner said.

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What's there to look for? The IHH's affiliation with Hamas and al-Qaeda, as well as its involvement in an attempt to bomb LA Airport in 1999, are well known facts.

IHH’s name was also mentioned during the trial of Ahmed Ressam held in the United States in 2000 (Ressam was a senior Al-Qaeda operative active in Canada, who at the end of 1999 entered the United States in a car carrying 600 kilograms (1320 pounds) of explosives. He planned to carry out a mass-casualty attack at the Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium.) The United States federal prosecutors called Jean-Louis Bruguière, a leading French investigating magistrate in charge of terrorism affairs, as an expert witness. He testified that IHH had played an important role in Al-Qaeda’s planned attack. According to Bruguière, IHH served as a cover for Al-Qaeda and acquired forged documents, enlisted operatives and transferred weapons.

Denmark, France and Turkey too have extensively investigated this "charity":

In a 2006 Working paper published by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), with respect to IHH largely based on Bruguière's findings,[56] terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, citing as source the closing argument for the prosecution in a French criminal court case co-authored by Bruguière, described by Kohlmann as "a French intelligence report", alleges that Turkey had known of the IHH links to terrorism for at least ten years, and that Turkish authorities began their own domestic criminal investigation of IHH as early as December 1997, when sources revealed that leaders of IHH were purchasing automatic weapons from regional Islamic militant groups. According to the source cited by Kohlmann, IHH's bureau in Istanbul was thoroughly searched, and its local officers were arrested; security forces uncovered "an array of disturbing items, including firearms, explosives, bomb-making instructions and a “jihad flag”"; and, after analyzing seized IHH documents, Turkish authorities concluded that "detained members of IHH were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya".

Plus, Gaza Flotilla's club-wielding humanitarians generously provided video statements of their readiness and willingness for martyrdom. There are also plenty of videos of them attacking IDF soldiers with clubs and stabbing them with knives. Not to mention that the launch of the flotilla was attended by known terrorists.

What other evidence is needed?