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AMP Report – January 16, 2008
New indictment against IARA:
Former Congressman also indicted
for lobbying Muslim charity
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
January 16, 2008 - A federal grand jury in Kansas City, Missouri today indicted a former Michigan Congressman, Mark Deli Siljander, for lobbying on behalf of a Muslim charity, the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), before it was shut down in October 2004.
The 42-count new indictment charges IARA with sending approximately $130,000 to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated as a Global Terrorist in February 2003, thereby blocking all property and interests in property of Hekmatyar. The money, sent to bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, was masked as donations to an orphanage located in buildings that Hekmatyar owned, the indictment said.
The new indictment accuses IARA of paying Siljander, $50,000 for the lobbying. According to the indictment, Siljander, a Republican who served in the House of Representatives from 1981-1987, was hired in March 2004 by IARA to advocate for the removal of IARA from a Senate Finance Committee list of 24 Muslim charities and non-profit groups suspected of being involved in supporting international terrorism. The Senate Finance Committee placed IARA on this list of charities that was published in January 2004.
Interestingly, after almost two years, in November 2005, the U.S. Senate committee concluded its work with no plans to issue a report. "We did not find anything alarming enough that required additional follow-up beyond what law enforcement is already doing," Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who headed the committee, said at that time.
The Department of Justice press release issued today pointed out that it is important to note that the indictment does not charge any of the defendants with material support of terrorism, nor does it allege that they knowingly financed acts of terror. “Instead, the indictment alleges that some of the defendants engaged in financial transactions that benefited property controlled by a designated terrorist, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”
IARA, that was once received funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for development in Africa, has long denied allegations that it has financed terrorists. The group's attorney, Shereef Akeel rejected the charges outlined in today’s indictment. "For four years I have not seen a single piece of a document that shows anyone did anything wrong," Akeel said.
IARA, the Islamic charitable organization named in today’s indictment, was headquartered in Columbia, Missouri, and was formerly known as the Islamic African Relief Agency-USA. IARA was officially formed in 1985 and closed in October 2004, when it was identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist organization. Mubarak Hamed, 51, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sudan, served as IARA’s former executive director and is named as a defendant in the indictment.
Other defendants named in the indictment are Ali Mohamed Bagegni, 53, formerly of Columbia, Mo, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Libya and a former member of IARA’s board of directors; Ahmad Mustafa, 55, of Columbia, a citizen of Iraq, and a former fund-raiser for IARA; Khalid Al-Sudanee, 56, a citizen and resident of Jordan, and the regional director of the Middle East office of the Islamic African Relief Agency (also known as the Islamic Relief Agency, or ISRA); and Abdel Azim El-Siddig, 51, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Sudan, and formerly vice president for international operations for IARA.
On March 6, 2007, IARA, along with five officers, employees and associates were charged in a 33-count indictment for illegally transferring funds to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions. They were also charged with stealing government funds, with misusing IARA’s charitable status to raise funds for an unlawful purpose, and with attempting to avoid government detection of their illegal activities by, among other things, falsely denying in a nationally-televised interview that a procurement agent of Osama bin Laden had been an employee of IARA. These charges are included in the superseding indictment returned today.
The new indictment of IARA has alarmed the American Muslim community as Muslim charities remain a target in the post-9/11 era. Since Sept. 11, 2001, at least six major American Muslim charities have been shuttered in this fashion. The government still doesn't have a single terrorism conviction against any of the employees or board members of any of those charities. Similarly, the government has never been able to document a bona fide trail showing how money from the charity got into the hands of actual terrorists.
In October 2007, prosecution failed to win any convictions against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. U.S. District Judge Joe Fish, declared a mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation charity case after jurors failed to reach a verdict.
The Holy Land case was considered so significant that President Bush personally announced the seizure of its assets in December 2001. He made this announcement at a press conference in the Rose Garden four days after a request from then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The president said that money raised by the group "is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers."
In 2004, John Ashcroft, the then US Attorney General, personally announced the indictment in the HLF case. "This prosecution sends a clear message: There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks. The United States will ensure that both terrorists and their financiers meet the same, certain justice," he said.
Muslim Public Affairs Council, a leading American Muslim civil rights group, today called for media professionals and the public to stress the presumption of innocence. "The public is cautioned that the charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
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