The U.S. government this week said the head of a human-rights organization working on behalf of Islamist political prisoners was also a financier for al Qaeda.
Most of the world knows Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi as a Qatari history professor and human-rights activist. The Swiss-based organization he founded, known as al-Karama from the Arab word for dignity, has worked closely with the United Nations and American human rights groups, most notably Human Rights Watch.
According to the U.S. government, however, al-Naimi is also a major financier of al Qaeda. On Wednesday,
the Treasury Department issued a designation of al-Naimi that said he oversaw the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars to al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen over the last 11 years. In 2013, the designation says, al-Naimi ordered the transfer of nearly $600,000 to al Qaeda via the group’s representative in Syria.
