Via Al Arabiya [EXCLUSIVE]: How extremists smuggled $1 billion in cigarettes to finance terror

From: Al Arabiya English
More than three quarters of all cigarettes smoked in Libya are illicit, as over 13 billion cigarettes in the Maghreb region in 2016 had illegal origin. (File photo: AP)

By Francesca Astorri

Smuggling cigarettes has become such a profitable business for extremist groups, so much that former Algerian military commander of al-Qaeda in Maghreb extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar was also known as Mr. Marlboro.

More than three quarters of all cigarettes smoked in Libya are illicit, as over 13 billion cigarettes in the Maghreb region in 2016 had illegal origin now that smuggling has become one of the main sources of financing of extremist groups in the Middle East.

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