Iraqi rebels steal $17.6m :: Middle East News and Perspectives

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January 13, 2005

Iraqi rebels steal $17.6m

Topics: Middle East News and Perspectives

This story is just breaking in Australia. The last thing we need is for the terrorists to have more money to spend, but maybe there is some good news here. Call me an optimist, but if the terrorists are robbing banks for funds then perhaps our efforts to stop the flow of money from Iran and Syria are begining to have an effect on the terrorists ability to pay for the on-going insurgency. Of course we don't know for sure that the bank robbers were terrorists or insurgents, they could have been just a bunch of plain-old-vanilla crooks. Terrorists are more likely to just kill everyone in the bank, but the bank robbers in the article just locked the employees in a room.We'll have to wait on this to know for sure.

However, on the flip side of this is the problem of terrorists, if they are that, running around with 17.6 million Iraqi dinars more than they had before a bank was robbed that should have been better secured and protected.

The article at news.au.com is rather short on information:

Breaking news - news.com.au(Australia) Jan 13
ARMED men robbed an Iraqi bank in Ramadi, the troubled capital of western al-Anbar province, stealing about $US13.5 million ($17.6 million) worth of Iraqi dinars.

"At 11am (7pm AEDT), a group broke into the Rashid bank and locked all the employees in a room and took all the money from the bank before escaping," a police captain said. Source..