Somali financial network hit hard by hyperbole

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.