Jimmy Gurule

Unfunding Terror: The Legal Response to the Financing of Global Terrorism

According to the FBI, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that claimed the lives of 2,973 innocent civilians required as much as

The Failure to Prosecute ISIS’s Foreign Financiers Under the Material Support Statute

500,000 to stage. At the time, al Qaeda, the jihadi terrorist organization responsible for the mass killings, was operating on an annual budget between

International criminal law : cases and materials

30 and

United States Opposition to the 1998 Rome Statute Establishing an International Criminal Court: Is the Court's Jurisdiction Truly Complementary to National Criminal Jurisdictions?

50 million. However, despite the obvious fact that terrorists need money to support their terrorist operations and organizational infrastructure, prior to 9/11, preventing the financing of terrorism was not a priority for the United States or international community. Moreover, a comprehensive legal framework to deprive terrorists of funding had not been developed. Unfunding Terror: The Legal Response to the Financing of Global Terrorism examines the legal framework that evolved immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The principal legal components of that strategy include: (1) freezing the assets, both domestically and internationally, of terrorists, terrorist organizations, and their sympathizers; (2) implementing regulatory measures to prevent terrorists from using the financial system as a conduit to facilitate terrorist financing; (3) the development of international standards to prevent the financing of terrorism; (4) criminal enforcement actions against terrorist financiers and their front entities; and (5) private civil causes of actions against the financial aiders and abettors of terrorism. The book further analyzes whether the legal response has been effective in disrupting and depriving al Qaeda, Taliban, and affiliated terrorist organizations of funding, identifying important successes as well as failures and shortcomings. Finally, Unfunding Terror proposes several recommendations to strengthen the legal framework to deny terrorists the money needed to wage a global jihad, acquire weapons of mass destruction, and launch a terrorist attack on the scale of what occurred on September 11.

Principles of Counter-Terrorism Law

This chapter will provide an overview of the organizational structure of the US material support offence in 18 U.S.C. section 2339B. Next, this chapter will examine recent Department of Justice prosecutions against ISIS sympathizers under section 2339B, highlighting the frequent prosecution of US nationals for attempt and conspiracy to join ISIS in Syria as well as the lack of prosecutions of those who finance and enable ISIS abroad. Finally, this chapter argues the material support statute should be applied extraterritorially to prosecute foreign nationals providing such financial support and services to ISIS abroad. This chapter concludes by suggesting that prosecuting the financial enablers of ISIS under the material support statute is a more effective strategy to ultimately defeating ISIS than the current strategy of using elaborate sting operations to charge home-based “wannabe” terrorists.