South Africa has never been touched by Islamist attacks. Its three-decade-old democracy is solid, and its financial system is respected. ECRNewsWatch
Yet experts say the continent's most industrialised nation is now a nerve centre for jihadist financing in Africa.
"I don't think South Africa realised it. It was the Americans who said, 'something not okay is going on in your country,'" Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter-Extremism Project think-tank, told AFP.
Some 6.3 billion rand was wired from South Africa to Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria and Bangladesh through mobile money transfer using nearly 57,000 unregistered phone SIM cards between 2020 and 2021, according to an investigation by a South African weekly newspaper, the Sunday Times. IS internal documents seen by experts show that of the money raised on the continent, the IS in Somalia keeps 50 percent while 25 percent is split between cells in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the balance going to IS central.One of the suspects listed by the United States as an IS cell leader is Durban-based Farhad Hoomer, 47.
Tore Hamming, a fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, told AFP those involved in jihadist financing were"pretty well-known extremist figures from South Africa who have been active in the extremist milieu for a good number of years.
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