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Not to beat a dead horse. But this horse appears very much alive and prospering, even. Last year, the US government declared Milan-based businessman Ahmed Idris Nasreddin a key financier of Al Qaeda, along with his associate Youssef M. Nada. (The two are apparently devotees of the Muslim Brotherhood, and give credit, financial advice and money laundering services, to a variety of Islamist terrorist groups, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden among them). The UN Security Council soon followed suit, while the US put a couple dozens of the men's identified businesses -- banks in the Caribbean, holding companies in Switzerland, Italy and Liechtenstein -- on a list of designated terrorist entities with which US businesses are forbidden to do business.
But as NBC's Lisa Myers reports today, Nasreddin's luxury hotel in Milan , Hotel Nasco (that is short for Nasreddin Co.) appears to be open for business.
And as I pointed out in a recent article for the Nation, Nasreddin has a long time business partner with whom US businesses such as Bechtel and new Mississippi governor Haley Barbour's New Bridge Strategies, are getting cozy in Iraq, Iraqi businessman, Sadoon Al-Bunnia. As I wrote in my Nation piece:
"Sadoon Al-Bunnia is one of three principals in one of Iraq's oldest companies, the Al-Bunnia Trading Company. The Iraqi firm has become a major subcontractor for US firms working under US government contracts in Iraq. But, as documents obtained by The Nation from the Lugano office of the Swiss Federal Commercial Registry show, Sadoon Al-Bunnia is also a founding partner of a Swiss-registered firm called the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (MIGA), which the US government and the United Nations Security Council have designated as funders of Al Qaeda. MIGA is one of fourteen businesses controlled by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef M. Nada..."
We wonder if and when the US government will make the connection.....