CAMERA-SHY: Defendants in a cigarette-smuggling ring are escorted through a Brooklyn court yesterday. (
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A criminal Palestinian gang busted for smuggling $55 million worth of illegal cigarettes into New York City had direct ties to Middle East terrorists — and may have funded violent groups like Hamas and Hezbollah with their profits, authorities said yesterday.
Three smuggling-ring members are confidants or business associates of deadly terrorists like Rashid Baz, a Lebanese immigrant who shot at a yeshiva van on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 and killed a Jewish student.
“The association of some of the suspects in this case to Ari Halberstam’s killer, the ‘blind sheik’ [Omar Abdel-Rahman] and a top Hamas official concerned us gravely,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Muaffaq Askar, 46, whom Baz has called his “Palestinian uncle,” is accused of smuggling the illegal cigarettes and selling them to Arab stores, Kelly said.
“We know that some members of this group have ties to very dangerous people,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, adding that only a fraction of the $10 million the ring made in profits has been recovered.
“We are following the money, and we’ll work to track it down wherever it went.”
Another alleged smuggler, Mohannad Seif, 39, was already on the NYPD’s radar because he lived in the same small Brooklyn apartment building as the personal secretary to top Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk, Kelly said.
Most frighteningly, alleged smuggler Yousef Odeh, 52, accepted a $10,000 investment for his baby-formula business from Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik who was convicted in the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
A yearlong investigation by cops and the Attorney General’s Office uncovered the 16-man ring, which bought more than 1 million cartons of cigarettes from a Virginia wholesaler — to avoid the high New York tax — before driving them to New York City and two upstate counties.
Investigators seized $1.4 million in cash and three handguns when they searched the ringleader’s Maryland home.
Defense attorneys for the 11 men arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday dismissed the idea their clients had ties to terror.
“Ray Kelly has always tried to connect any Arab man with terrorism or terror organizations.” said Odeh’s attorney, Lamis Deek. “This is at best a simple untaxed-cigarette case.”
One of the alleged smugglers is in Jordan and four are awaiting their arraignments in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.
jsaul@nypost.com