The Turkish Islamic charity behind the flotilla of Gaza aid ships raided by Israeli forces had "clear" links to terror groups, it has been claimed today.
France's former senior anti-terrorism judge said the Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, known by its Turkish acronym IHH, had "clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and Jihad".
Jean-Louis Bruguiere said IHH was involved in the 1999 al Qaida plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Mr Bruguiere, who led the French judiciary's counter-terrorism unit for nearly two decades before retiring in 2007, did not indicate whether IHH still has terror ties, but said it did when he investigated it in the late 1990s.
"They were basically helping al Qaida when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target US soil," he said.
Some members of an international terrorism cell known as the Fateh Kamel network then worked at the IHH, he said. Kamel, an Algerian-Canadian dual national, had ties to the nascent al Qaida, Mr Bruguiere said.
Among Kamel's followers was Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who was arrested in the US state of Washington in December 1999 on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport as part of an al Qaida plot.
"IHH had a role in the organisation that led to the plot," Mr Bruguiere said, reiterating sworn testimony he made in a US Federal Court during Ressam's trial. Ressam is serving a 22-year prison sentence.
Mr Bruguiere issued an international warrant for Kamel, Ressam's former mentor, who was extradited from Jordan to France in 1999 and sentenced to eight years in prison on terror-related charges.
IHH denies ties to radical groups. The group is not among 45 groups listed as terrorists by the US State Department.
"We are a legal organisation," IHH board member Omer Faruk Korkmaz said. "We have nothing to do with any illegal organisation."
"We don't know Ahmed Ressam or Fateh Kamel," Mr Korkmaz said. "We don't approve of the actions of any terrorist organisation in the world."
Mr Bruguiere, 67, is now the co-ordinator for the European Union in a terrorism finance tracking programme jointly run with the US.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters that "we know that IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria and Gaza over the past three years. That is obviously of great concern to us."
But he said the US could not "validate" that IHH has connections to al Qaida.