at large.--Stephen V Cole

Both the Customs Service and the Immigration & Naturalization Service claim credit for the capture of Ahmed Ressam. INS insists that it spotted him and tipped off Customs to arrest him, but Customs insist it got a "cold hit" on Ressam without being warned by anyone.--Stephen V Cole

January 16, 2000; France became (10 Jan) the first nation to sign a new international treaty intended to restrict the international funding of terrorism. Most terrorist organizations have links to supposedly humanitarian fund-raising organizations in other countries, and the treaty would attempt to track these groups, link them to terrorist organizations, and ban them from raising or transferring money. The US, Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sri Lanka also signed. The convention commits nations to freeze and confiscate terrorist funds, and bans the use of banking regulations to refuse to give information to other countries about suspect groups. The convention also sets up a system to use confiscated terrorist funds to compensate the victims of terrorism. --Stephen V Cole

January 16, 2000; US prosecutors convinced a federal judge on 12 Jan to continue to hold Canadian woman Lucia Garofalo without bail until her trial in February. She was arrested in Vermont while trying to smuggle an Algerian into the country on a phony passport. Government prosecutors showed cell phone records proving that Garofalo had been in frequent contact with known Algerian radicals and terrorists. She has been linked to Ahmed Ressam, the suspected terrorist arrested near Seattle, through phone records of calls to known associates of