In the wake of September 11, the US authorities targeted informal financial networks serving people in the Islamic world for particularly severe treatment. One of these was called Barakkat, a cash-transmission network that linked expatriate Somalis living in the US with their impoverished home country. Barakkat was closed down less than a month after the outrage, causing enormous stress to the large expatriate Somali community in the US and their families in Somalia.
The US alleged at the time that Barakkat was a "quartermaster of terror" and closely linked to al-Qaeda. It...
