Qatar denies funding terrorism in Syria
The Emir of Qatar has defended his country after Western governments accused it of funding terrorism in Syria.
Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the 34-year-old ruler of the wealthy Gulf state, gave an interview to CNN in which he denied the claims.
“We don’t fund extremists,” he said.
However, he conceded Qatari definitions of “terrorism” were not always the same as those in the U.K. or U.S.
Western intelligence has long believed that the Qatari government has collaborated with its wealthy citizens to provide weapons and funds to Sunni extremist groups inside Syria.
One of Islamic State’s senior commanders raised $2 million US for “military operations” from a donor in Qatar, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Tariq bin al-Tahar al-Harzi, a 32-year-old Tunisian, has been designated as a “global terrorist” by the U.S. Treasury. Harzi serves as IS’s “Emir” of the border region between Turkey and Syria and oversees the flow of foreign fighters into Syria.
The U.S. Treasury also named a Qatari national, Ibrahim al-Bakr, 37, as a middleman between al-Qaida’s core leadership in Pakistan and terrorist financiers in the Gulf.
A third individual, Omar al-Qatari, a 25-year-old Jordanian and newly designated as a “global terrorist,” was arrested in 2012 while trying to fly to Qatar with thousands of dollars “intended for al-Qaida.”
Qatar has joined the U.S.-led offensive against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The Gulf monarchy has contributed two Mirage jet fighters to the air campaign.
Sheik Tamim said in the interview that terrorism was “not acceptable in our culture and our religion” and denied his country funded terrorist groups. However, he said the West needed “to see the difference between” Islamist rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and terrorist groups.