Ursula Kampmann (November 24, 2014 at 4:26 am) is not having any of this questioning into whose pockets money from the no-questions-asked trade in dugup antiquities goes. She informs us that the memory sticks mentioned in Martin Chulov's Guardian article of June 15, 2014 are a red herring. Chulov notes that at the arrest of courier Abu Hajjar and the assassination of ISIL leader Abdulrahman al-Bilawi:
Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group. The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group's finances.Kampmann has other information:
Now a German journalist has checked all 160 data carriers, the Guardian article wrote about. And he noted publicly the following (my rough translation): “Where does the money come from? There have been a lot of speculations about art smuggling, income from kidnapping and selling oil. Nothing about this topic can be found in the records.”The German journalist is not named, how he got classified Iraqi intelligence data is not revealed, neither is where one can read his article in the original. So Kampmann is denying that there is any evidence that ISIL are raising money from ransoms, selling oil and smuggling. That's par for the course I guess. The world says one thing, dugup antiquity dealers and their supporters deny everything.
Mind you, Sam Hardy and others, including myself, were questioning the Chulov account anyway. That however does not negate the issue of where the money from no-questions-asked antiquities sales actually goes.
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