Posted on 01/23/2004 7:36:44 AM PST by rface
A congressional committee has included a local Islamic charity in a new round of inquiries into suspected ties between not-for-profit groups and terrorists.
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has requested the financial records of 25 Islamic charities, including the Columbia-based Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA. In particular, the request included donor lists that are reported to the IRS but protected under a privacy statute.
The request comes two years after FBI, Department of the Treasury and other federal agency investigations into charities suspected of having ties to international terrorists. Since 2001, the United States has frozen more than $136 million in assets of various groups believed to have ties to groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic resistance group Hamas.
The IARA, formerly known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, became one of 30 charities in late 1999 that came under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of State for funding activities reputed to be against U.S. national security.
That focus was renewed after Sept. 11, 2001, following published reports of federal court transcripts that Ziyad Khalil, a former MU student with ties to the local charity, had purchased a satellite phone later used by Osama bin Laden to plot the 1988 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The reports added that Khalil worked for a company that leased the IARA its Web site domain name.
Later that month, however, Ninth District Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, announced after speaking to the FBI that there was “no credible information at all that Columbia has any connection” to the Sept. 11 attacks. The charity was also not among a list of Islamic not-for-profits whose assets were frozen.
Senate Finance Committee aide Laura Hayes said from Washington, D.C., yesterday that all the organizations on the committee’s list “for one reason or another, … raised a red flag.” She added that the Senate “investigation isn’t assuming guilt” but “is just a part of the committee’s oversight duties.”
An IARA representative deferred comment on the investigation to the organization’s board of directors. The board members did not respond to faxes and e-mail inquiries sent Tuesday to the IARA office.
According to tax forms for not-for-profits in 2001 and 2002, IARA raises money for relief assistance, foster care and orphanages in conflict-ridden areas in Africa, Asia and Bosnia. Mention of aid to Middle Eastern countries listed in previous years’ filings was missing from the 2001 and 2002 reports.
Total expenses in 2002 included $230,061 for “relief assistance for refugees and disaster victims,” $251,818 in aid for “needy children” and $183,115 in “food, shelter, water, medical and educational services to needy families.”
Expenditures for charity programs fell from $1.9 million in 2001 to $1 million in 2002.
IRS officials have reportedly said they would cooperate with the investigation, citing the Senate Finance Committee’s authority to supercede privacy statutes that protect not-for-profits from scrutiny.
Committee Chairman Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said in a Dec. 2 letter to the IRS that they suspect many Islamic charities are fronts for people trying to funnel money to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.
But Arsalan Iftikhar, director of legal affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he worried the inquiry would heighten suspicion of law-abiding Islamic Americans.
“When we continue to see Islamic organizations being caught in this nebulous war on terror, it insinuates that any Muslim in this country should be held up to suspicion,” he said.
Iftikhar said the release of donor lists to the Senate committee would leave donors open to federal investigation and dampen the charities’ fund-raising ability.
“We’ve heard from hundreds of people that if they write a check to an organization, the FBI is going to flag them and come investigate them,” Iftikhar said. “Basically, this is chilling our freedom of association because it needlessly makes American Muslims scared.”
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Reach John Sullivan at (573) 815-1731 or jsullivan@tribmail.com.
There is also an historical connection of Columbia to al-Qaida
I do know that she has a Mizzou connection to Saddam and Iraq.
Ping
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://12thman.us/media/jihad.rm (Requires RealPlayer)
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