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Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) has long been of keen interest to the FBI in connection with its investigation of terrorism and the biological, chemical or radiological terrorism. Cooperating witness Jamal al-Fadl has told Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI that in 1992, Bin Laden sent him Bin Laden’s headquarters in Sudan to Zagreb, Croatia, to gather information about the Bosnian war and the prospects of jihad there. In Croatia, he met with Enaam Arnaout (who the next ear would become the head of the BIF in the US), and al-Qaeda operatives Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros (a.k.a. Abdel Rahman al Dosari). Barbaros spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in the mid-1990s in exhorting young men to jihad. (The blind sheik’s son, who would serve on the 3-member Al Qaeda WMD committee, spoke alongside Al-Timimi in 1993 and again in 1996.) A Justice Department indictment explains that Barbaros said that “al-Qaeda’s goal in Bosnia was to establish a base for operations in Europe against al-Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.” Around this time, BIF began providing food, clothing, money and communications equipment to fighters in Bosnia.

In 1994, when Bin Laden’s brother-in-law was arrested in California with a BIF official Mohammed Loay Bayazid on a mission to buy uranium, the Bayazid listed BIF’s Chicago-area office as his residence. Bayazid, a Syrian, was one of the founders of both Al Qaeda and BIF. In 1996, al-Fadl, who had been involved in an earlier attempt to buy uranium for Bin Laden along with Bayazid, defected from al-Qaeda. There are 900 pages of transcripts of conversations in videotaped teleconferences where the FBI agents and prosecutor Fitzpatrick did not realize the marshals who set up the video teleconferences were taping.

An FBI Special Agent in an affidavit in the prosecution of its head, Arnaout, alleged that Arnaout “has a relationship with Usama Bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade, as evidence by cooperating witnesses and seized documents.” He continued “various persons involved in terrorist activists -— specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda — have had contacts with BIF offices and personnel.” The agent opined that Arnaout was a trusted associate of Bin Laden and also Gubuddin Hekmatyar and once involved with Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami organization. For a time, the BIF head administered funds for Bin Laden but later had a personality conflict with Al Qaeda military commander, Egyptian Mohammed Atef. Atef came to head the plans to weaponize anthrax. A folder recovered in another BIF trash search in December 2001 indicated handwritten notations in Arabic indicating that BIF had a field office in Zagreb, Croatia for relief operations support of jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The future Lenox Hill Hospital intern and resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, attended medical school in Zagreb while he worked for BIF.

In the prosecution of BIF head Arnaout, the agent recounted that in an April 1999, the FBI recovered from BIF’s office in Palos Hills, Illinois, a February 1999 article in the Seattle Times concerning smallpox as a biological terrorism weapon. The sections of the text indicating that authorities were poorly prepared for a biological attack involving smallpox were highlighted. Although I do not see an article from February, on March 15, 1999, for example, there was a news article explaining that the idea that smallpox was a threat took hold when Ken Alibek said that Russia had produced tons of anthrax, along with smallpox. The FBI realized that if one wanted to gain access to what this defector knew about weaponizing anthrax, one would merely have to apply to be a graduate student down the hall from him — which is exactly what Dr. Faraj’s Falls Church fellow Salafist Ali Al-Timimi did.

In 2000, Chechen military commander associated with Bin Laden’s CBRN aspirations, Ibn Khattab solicited funds on the Al Qaeda website, qoqaz.com. Mirrored by a North Brunswick, NJ webmaster Mazen Mokhtar, the website said that funds should be routed through one of two charities. One of the two charities commended by the website for this purpose was BIF.

In the New York City area, BIF was represented by Saffet Abid Catovic. Catovic was a boy scout troop leader, religious teacher, hospital administrator, and senior Bosnian diplomat and “Minister Counsellor” at the Bosnian Mission to United Nations in Manhattan. New York City police found his New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation business card among the personal effects of the blind sheik’s bodyguard, El Sayyid Nosair, after Nosair assassinated militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane. Mr. Catovic worked as a budget director at a New York Hospital. In a videotaped religious lecture, Catovic introduced and praised Siddig Ali (who was later convicted of a central role in a fundamentalist conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks in 1993). Siddig Ali spoke on the subject of “Jihad: The Forgotten Duty.” Catovic spoke alongside Mazen Mokhtar at a jihad summer camp in Pennsylvania in 2000 in which he explained that a timeframe for the US to become a caliphate was 2-5 years.

Yusuf Wells, who was a BIF fundraiser visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:

“I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball weaponry. They call it ‘training’ and are very serious about it. I knew at least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.

Most all of them young men between the ages of 17-35. I was asked by the amir of the group to give a talk after Thuhr prayer. I spoke about seeing the conditions of Muslims overseas while with BIF, and how the fire of Islam is still very much alive in the hearts of the people even in the midst of extreme oppression. I also stressed the idea of being balanced. That we should not just be jihadis and perfect our fighting skills, but we should also work to perfect our character and strengthen our knowledge of Islam. I also said that Muslims are not just book reading cowards either, and that they should be commended for forming such a group.

Many were confused as to why I had been ‘trusted’ to join the group so quickly, but were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get presentations on their respective localities.”

The Newark, NJ BIF office was searched in mid-December 2001 at the same time the office in the Chicago area was searched. Prosecutor Fitzpatrick was furious at “Germs” author Judy Miller when called the BIF Chicago-area office and asked them if they had heard that the FBI was going to search their offices the next day.

Dating back to its founding, BIF is connected to World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Falls Church, Virginia, which was run by Bin Laden’s nephew. 50 FBI agents raided WAMY offices raided in late May 2004. The Washington Post explained: “Sources said the raid was part of an investigation into whether the group’s operations around the world have financial and other ties to terrorists, but the scope of the probe could not be learned because the case is under court seal.” Abdullah bin Laden incorporated WAMY’s U.S. branch in Falls Church in 1992, became president and was listed on forms until at least 1998. A volunteer board member who had just received his computer sciences doctorate from George Mason University was arrested on immigration charges. He was expert and had published on computer security protocols. An arrest warrant issued for Lenox Hill physician Dr. Hassan Faraj on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. The WAMY official and GMU computer security grad left for Saudi Arabia under a plea agreement in July.

FBI Director Mueller announced that they FBI had given itself a self-imposed deadline of October 1, 2004 to bring an indictment in Amerithrax. On September 24, 2004, the indictment that came down, however, merely indicted GMU microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi for inciting the young men to jihad. Senior DOJ officials do not think Ali was “operational” — that is, he was not thought to be the processor or mailer.