Swiss Close Probe -- setback to BushCo

[FreedomAngel82]

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8062039/site/newsweek

Snip: <WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 2:25 p.m. ET June 1, 2005


June 1 - In a significant setback for the Bush administration's
international crackdown on those it suspects of funding terrorism,
Swiss prosecutors have "suspended" a long-running criminal
investigation into Al Taqwa, an Islamic network that Washington
believes has provided financing for Al Qaeda and other terror groups.

Youssef Nada, founder and head of Al Taqwa, told NEWSWEEK by
telephone that his lawyer had received a letter from the Swiss
federal attorney general's office earlier today informing him that
an investigation which the office had launched in the weeks after
the 9/11 attacks was to be closed. In an order issued earlier this
year, a Swiss court had given the prosecutor's office until May 31
to either present the results of its investigation to a judge for
further proceedings or close the file.

Mark Wiedmer, spokesman for the Swiss Attorney General's office in
Bern, said that the investigation was not absolutely terminated
but "suspended" because it could be restarted if new evidence was
acquired by Swiss authorities. But Wiedmer acknowledged that
prosecutors concluded that after three and a half years of
investigation they could not put together enough evidence in time
for the May 31 deadline to convince a federal investigating
magistrate that a criminal case against Nada and Al Taqwa could be
taken to trial. Hence the investigation had to be closed for now.

By the same token, Wiedmer said, "We don't say they Taqwa] are innocent." The lengthy investigation, he argued, was
a "qualified success" because prosecutors now know "what's the
matter , we know what's not the matter and we know
where we don't know what's the matter.">