French company Lafarge acting as ISIS ITM, fined $777 million in New York

Ensuring Socio-economic Justice

Crescent International

Rabi' al-Awwal 22, 1444 2022-10-18

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

That the terror group, ISIS (known as Daesh to Muslims) is a western creation and supported by western regimes has once again been confirmed.

The French cement company, Lafarge SA was indicted in US District Court in Brooklyn, New York, on October 18, but no individuals have been charged so far, according to the CNBC.

The investigation into the company’s misdemeanors is ongoing.

In pleading guilty, Lafarge SA has agreed to pay a fine of $777.8 million.

The criminal charge related to the French company’s payments to the terror outfits Daesh and Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) to keep its cement plant operating in Syria.

More than $10 million were paid to the terrorist outfits from August 2013 through 2014.

This was in exchange for the terror outfits allowing employees of the company to pass through their checkpoints in areas under their control.

CNBC reported that payments were being made even as “the terror group was kidnapping and killing westerners.”

Obviously, kidnapping Muslim civilians and killing them has never been an issue and does not elicit any condemnation.

It still continues in areas under ISIS control.

“Lafarge has admitted and taken responsibility for its staggering crime,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

“Never before has a [western] corporation been charged with providing material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”

Peace’s office said Lafarge Cement Syria executives bought materials needed for their cement plant in the Jalabiyeh region of northern Syria from ISIS-controlled suppliers.

In return, it paid monthly “donations” to ISIS and ANF, so that employees, customers and suppliers could cross checkpoints around the plant without fear of being kidnapped for ransom.

Lafarge Cement Syria “eventually agreed to make payments to ISIS based on the volume of cement that LCS sold to its customers, which Lafarge and LCS executives likened to paying ‘taxes,’” Peace’s office said.

It wasn’t “taxes”, but protection money, and it served the west’s larger agenda of keeping Syria in turmoil.

Lafarge was purchased by Switzerland-based Holcim in 2015.

What the US attorney did not mention was that ISIS was created by the US.

It is still supported by Washington.

American forces operate in areas under ISIS control in eastern Syria from where the US smuggles oil and wheat to Iraq.

In May 2013, while visiting Turkey, the late US Senator John McCain entered Syria illegally and met ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

McCain’s office even released a photograph of that meeting.

Later, the senator’s office said, the photograph was released by “mistake”.

There was no mistake about McCain meeting the terrorist leader!

The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, in interviews with numerous media outlets said the US was ferrying weapons to ISIS terrorists in Afghanistan.

Unmarked helicopters are used to ship weapons as well as the terrorists to Afghanistan.

Since the Afghan air space is under complete US control, its complicity in such crimes is undeniable.

The terrorists operate in Afghanistan under the label, ISIS-Khorassan brigade.

They have been involved in terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan including a recent attack in Kabul where more than 50 girls were killed as they were taking their university entrance exams.

There was little or no reaction from the west that never tires of accusing the Taliban from preventing girls from acquiring education.

Here were girls taking exams for further studies but their murder at the hands of western-backed terrorists did not elicit much response.

While Lafarge SA has been indicted—and rightly so—will we ever hear about American officials being indicted from actively supporting the terrorists?

McCain may be dead but the CIA and US military continue to work closely with ISIS terrorists.

Hypocrisy has no limits as far as the west is concerned.