ustimes

[ustimes]

Games consoles at centre of US terror case

A Miami businessman is facing terrorism-related charges for selling a consignment of Sony PlayStations to a shopping centre in Paraguay that US authorities say is a fundraising front for Hizbollah, the militant Lebanese Shia movement. The case against Khalid Safadi, a Paraguayan national with US residency, and two Florida associates follows a three-year joint investigation by US antiterrorism agencies. The federal trial is expected to shed light on the so-called tri-border area between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina that western intelligence agencies have long maintained is a haven for smugglers and counterfeiters funding militant Muslim groups. A shipment of PlayStation consoles and Sony cameras that Mr Safadi is alleged to have exported, using fake documentation, were destined for the Galeria Page, a mall in Paraguay's commercial town of Ciudad del Este, just across the river Parana from the Brazilian town of Foz do Iguacu and Argentina's Puerto Iguazu.

The shopping centre is owned by Assad Ahmad Barakat and blacklisted by the US and other countries as an alleged Hizbollah associate. All US sales to the place were banned in 2006 under an executive order to curb terrorist financing signed by then president George W. Bush less than two weeks after the al-Qaeda attacks of September 2001.

Mr Barakat was released from jail in Paraguay last year after serving six years for tax fraud.

Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities co-operated with the Miami investigation. The tri-border region is the hub of a thriving “informal” economy run, among others, by members of the Lebanese and Palestinian immigrant communities.

Ana Sverdlick, an Argentine criminal lawyer, has described Ciudad del Este, with 250,000 people, as the “third largest commercial city in the world, only surpassed by Hong Kong and Miami”.

The Rand Corporation, the US risk analyst, has said that Hizbollah-linked networks in the area raise millions of dollars from pirating DVDs and CDs.

Mr Safadi was released from jail on Monday on $1.5m (€1.1m, £1m) bail, pending trial at which the defendants face 20 years in jail. Michael Tein, Mr Safadi’s lawyer, told the bail hearing his client was innocent. “Terrorism?” Mr Tein said. “More like The Great Sony PlayStation Caper. The indictment literally charges them with selling PlayStation 2 video games to Paraguay. That’s some weapon of mass destruction.”