Bin Laden 'financier' living here, says EC

A businessman accused of financing Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and who is believed to have visited the US twice just before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, is now living in Ireland, according to European Commission documents.

Documents released by the Commission claim Bin Muhammad Ayadi Chafiq now resides in Ireland. He has also appeared in documents released by the US Treasury Department naming terror suspects whose bank accounts should be frozen.

The 40-year-old Tunisian-born Bosnian national is named on an EC list of people believed to pose a significant terrorist risk. He is suspected of being involved in or with financing acts of terrorism. Financial institutions in EU member states are obliged to freeze any accounts opened by those on the list.

The list is contained in an EU regulation paper which imposes "certain specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities associated with Osama Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda network and the Taliban".

The paper named Bin Muhammad in the months after the September 11th attacks as an individual whose accounts should be frozen by all EU financial institutions. However, while the paper has been updated 18 times since late 2001, his whereabouts since the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks had been unknown.

The latest version of the EC paper, which was amended on May 19th, states: "Other information; his mother's name is Medina Abid; he is actually in Ireland".

While the Central Bank of Ireland yesterday confirmed they had frozen accounts belonging to six international terror suspects since September 11th, 2001, they would not say if Bin Muhammad Ayadi Chafiq was one of the individuals targeted.

He had his assets frozen in the UK in October 2001 and is understood to have fled his London home around the same time. Born in Tunisia in 1963, Bin Muhammad is known under several aliases He is a former head of a one-time Channel Island based group called Blessed Relief, or Muwafaq in Arabic. In the mid 1990s there was media speculation that Blessed Relief was being used to fund Muslim-lead Bosnian fighters in their war against Serbs and Croats.

The group was also investigated by Pakistani police as part of an international probe into terrorism after the first bombing of New York's World Trade Center.