Hezbollah and the United States

Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hezbollah was responsible for the deaths of more Americans around the world than any other terrorist organization.  In October 1983, a Hezbollah truck bomb killed 241 American Marines at the multinational force barracks in Beirut.  The following year, a suicide bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut killed 17 Americans, including many of the embassy's CIA staff.  Hezbollah is also responsible for the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, during which one American was killed, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

Hezbollah also maintains a network of cells in the U.S., according to the FBI.  In his testimony before Congress in September 2002, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Hezbollah's capability to organize an attack against U.S. targets was similar to that of Al Qaeda.

Hezbollah activity in the U.S. has been mostly limited to fundraising.  For example, In March 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, a Lebanese citizen living in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to raise money for Hezbollah.  Kourani admitted hosting meetings at his home where donations for Hezbollah were solicited by a guest speaker from Lebanon.  According to the indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Michigan in January 2004, Kourani was a "member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah."

The extent of Hezbollah activity in the U.S. was also exposed when two Charlotte, North Carolina, brothers, Mohamad and Chawki Hammoud, were convicted in June 2002 of providing material support to Hezbollah through a cigarette smuggling ring that knowingly directed money to the terrorist organization.  The brothers were part of a larger North American network responsible for raising funds and procuring dual-use technologies for Hezbollah. Items were purchased in both the U.S. and Canada, including goggles, global positioning systems, stun guns, naval equipment, nitrogen cutters and laser range finders.

The U.S. designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and listed it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in 2001.

Hezbollah in Europe

Hezbollah maintains terror cells and infrastructure throughout Europe. In particular, the organization uses Europe as an operational launching pad for its operatives to enter Israel in order to conduct attacks, assist other operatives and conduct surveillance and collect intelligence on Israeli targets.

For example, Ghulam Mahmud Qawqa, a Hezbollah agent who had engineered several attacks in Jerusalem and was captured in 2003 by Israeli police, admitted that he had been working with numerous Hezbollah cells in Europe to initiate a continent wide campaign against Israeli and Jewish targets for Hezbollah leadership.

In 2002, Israeli forces in Hebron apprehended Fawzi Ayoub, a Canadian citizen of Lebanese descent who traveled from Lebanon to Europe on his Canadian passport. In Europe he is believed to have met with a Hezbollah operative who supplied him with a fake American passport for his entry into Israel. He stayed in Jerusalem and reportedly attempted to approach arms brokers (the exact purpose of Ayoub's mission remains unclear).

A year earlier, Israeli authorities arrested Hezbollah operative Jihad (Gerard) Shuman, a Lebanese citizen with British nationality. Shuman flew from Lebanon to Britain on his Lebanese passport. After a briefing with a Hezbollah operative in Britain, he then flew from Britain to Israel on his British passport and stayed in Jerusalem where he was later arrested. A search of his possessions revealed a yarmulka, a timer, tourist maps of the Jerusalem area, a large sum of money, a video camera, disposable cameras and several cellular phones, according to Israeli authorities.

Germany has been a key fund raising center for Hezbollah. Most of the funds come from charitable organizations and are officially earmarked for Hezbollah's social welfare work. In 2002, Germany closed down two charitable organizations raising money for Hezbollah: the al-Shahid Social Relief Institution, which was the German branch of a Lebanese charitable organization, and the al-Aqsa Fund, a Hamas front that also raised funds for Hezbollah.

Hezbollah in South America

In 1992, 29 people were killed when Hezbollah bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.  Two years later, 85 people were killed by a Hezbollah bombing of the AMIA Jewish community building in Buenos Aires.  The trial in Argentina for the 1994 bombing revealed an extensive Hezbollah operational presence in South America.

Hezbollah is widely considered to have an established presence in the lawless, corrupt, drug-ridden triple border region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Hezbollah uses the area as a key locale for raising and laundering money, drug trafficking, weapons and people smuggling and document and currency fraud.

Paraguayan authorities identified Assad Ahmad Barakat as Hezbollah's leading operative and chief financier in the region. Barakat allegedly ran an extensive counterfeiting and money laundering operation in the area and sent $50 million to Hezbollah from 1995 until his arrest by Brazilian police in 2002. 

Other major arrests in the tri-border region include the 2000 arrest of Ali Khalil Mehri, a Lebanese businessman who allegedly funneled millions of dollars to Hezbollah made from selling pirated software, and the 2001 arrest of Barakat's personal secretary, Sobhi Mahmoud Fayad, who allegedly coordinated Hezbollah's fund raising operations in the region with Barakat. Mehri was released on bail and fled to Syria, and Fayad is currently serving a prison sentence in Paraguay for tax evasion.