A British man suspected of raising funds for al Qaida has been added to a US Treasury list of global terrorists.
James Alexander McLintock was accused by the US of raising money for terrorist groups, along with three other men and two groups, AP reported.
Born in Dundee, McLintock said in an interview with The Scotsman in 2004 that he had been a “committed Jihadist” who fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
Now thought to be 52, he told the newspaper he had converted to Islam in his 20s, changed his name to Yaqub McLintock and lived with his family in Pakistan.
He said he started a charity and a news agency in the 1990s to show what was “really happening” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US Treasury said his Pakistan-based Al-Rahmah Welfare Organization (RWO) is a front that provides money for al Qaida, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Afghan extremists groups under the guide of helping orphans.
Sanctions imposed on Thursday mean McLintock is on the department’s list of specially designated global terrorists, freezes any property he has within US jurisdiction and bans Americans from doing business with him, AP reported.
Saudi Arabia also designated the same six suspected of having ties across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The US Treasury said in a statement: “As of early 2013, McLintock recruited Afghan insurgents to obtain photos of children, Afghan identity documents, and cell phone numbers to create falsified dossiers used to obtain donations for RWO, which were funnelled to support al Qaida.
“As early as 2010, McLintock used RWO and the cover of providing stipends to Afghan orphans to finance the Taliban’s militant activities in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.”
The department said McLintock also regularly met with Taliban and other militant commanders.
McLintock received about £125,000 (180,000 US dollars) from donors in Britain between April 2011 and April 2012 and also received money from charities in the Persian Gulf and the United Kingdom, the US Treasury said.
