Today, despite any direct evidence, the U.S. Treasury Department insists al-Barakaat supported terrorists.

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And still there is no proven connection between al-Barakaat and al Qaeda.

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They interviewed Jumale twice and 22 other al-Barakaat personnel and returned home with 17, 000 pages of records, plus data from al-Barakaat and bank computers.

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Unconfirmed reports by sources to a U.S. embassy in Africa said that al-Barakaat security forces protected al Qaeda operatives in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

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But in potentially precedent-setting cases, such as those of Mr Kadi and al Barakaat, its reaction, expected by the summer, is much harder to predict.

ECONOMIST: UN law

The investigation of al-Barakaat went nowhere for a long time.

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Before Sept. 11 the FBI, CIA and other agencies had been keeping an eye on al-Barakaat, a money-transfer service used by Somalis in the U.S., as well as by the U.N. and aid agencies sending cash to relief operations in the Horn of Africa.

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And thousands of miles away in Minneapolis, home to half of America's 75, 000 Somali immigrants, FBI agents began to notice that al-Barakaat had deposited into bank accounts enormous sums of cash that had been wired to an account in the United Arab Emirates, a nation not known for tight financial controls.

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