US targets Hezbollah financing, offers big rewards for information
After the briefing, Kurdistan 24 spoke with Michael Evanoff, who similarly described KRG cooperation in working with the US against Hezbollah’s activities as “excellent.”
“We see this as another opening chapter of our two parties coming together to go after a malign organization that is hurting the west and the Middle East,” he said.
Evanoff also explained how people can get information on Hezbollah financial activity to the US government and receive a reward, if it proves valuable.
It is “very simple,” he said. If they have “actionable information,” they should report it to the nearest US diplomatic facility, whether the consulate in Erbil or the embassy in Baghdad.
“We’ll talk to them, strictly confidential,” he continued. “Their protection will be guaranteed.”
The Rewards for Justice program began in 1984, under the Reagan administration. Among its biggest successes was the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, which, like the 9/11 attacks eight years later, aimed to bring down the two towers.
Yousef was known among the New York extremists as “Rashid, the Iraqi” and had entered the US on an Iraqi passport. However, he proved not to be Iraqi, nor even Arab.
Yousef was Baluch. He was arrested in Islamabad in 1995, following an abortive attempt to bomb a dozen US airliners in the Philippines, when a young South African Muslim, whom he tried to recruit into yet another terrorist plot, reported him to US authorities.
Editing by Nadia Riva