Posted on 10/19/2003 7:11:26 AM PDT by veronica
Former University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian was on the inside of an elaborate international network designed to conceal funding for terrorist organizations, a federal investigator claims in a newly released court document.
The network used ``a convoluted web of multiple transactions'' by a network of companies, trusts and charities - mostly run by the same few people - to hide money going to two militant Palestinian groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the investigator says.
The suspect organizations were part of ``a complex coalition of overlapping companies in northern Virginia controlled by individuals who have shown support for terrorists or terrorist fronts,'' the document states. It calls this coalition the ``Safa Group,'' a name taken from one of the primary trusts.
The document, 101 pages long, is a sworn affidavit written to support a government request for a warrant to search 14 properties in Herndon, Va., and a Georgia poultry business on March 20, 2002.
The affidavit was filed with a federal judge in Virginia in March 2002 and signed by Customs Agent David Kane. Customs since has become part of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security.
Portions of the affidavit pertaining to Al-Arian, who is awaiting trial in Tampa on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges, were released three months ago after a lengthy court fight spearheaded by The Tampa Tribune in partnership with The New York Times.
But the rest of the document was kept secret until Friday, when the judge ordered nearly all the rest of it unsealed on motions from Dow Jones Inc., parent company of The Wall Street Journal; the Tribune; and The New York Times.
Expanding The Allegations
In the 20 pages or so of the affidavit released previously, the government alleged that Al-Arian organized the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the Middle East's most violent terrorist organizations, from his home in Tampa and might have authored its violent manifesto. Agents found the document, which terrorism experts didn't know existed, on Al-Arian's home computer in a raid in 1995.
The government also alleged in that portion of the affidavit connections among Al- Arian and a number of associates in Tampa and elsewhere. One eventually became head of the Jihad.
The newly released sections of the affidavit allege a wider web of connections between a number of the people in Al-Arian's circle and those running the Safa Group, and further allege links between these people and Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
In addition, Kane links Al- Arian with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Islamic spiritual leader considered the inspiration behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Safa Group used more than 100 charities, trusts and companies ``to facilitate the funding of terrorist operations,'' the affidavit states.
There is probable cause to believe that the people running the Safa Group knowingly provided material support to terrorist organizations and violated federal tax laws, Kane writes in the newly released portions of the affidavit.
Many of the Safa Group's organizations existed only on paper, according to the affidavit. Often they had the same mailing addresses, it states, and frequently they had the same directors and officers as well.
They engaged in a variety of practices designed to avoid government scrutiny, the affidavit says. They might have done so for several reasons, but Kane maintains that they did it to keep government agents from discovering that they were funneling money to the Jihad and Hamas.
Tracing Millions Of Dollars
The affidavit traces the movement of millions of dollars through the organizations. Some of it was transferred to two organizations that Al-Arian founded while at USF - the World and Islam Studies Enterprise and the Islamic Committee for Palestine. The government says both were fronts for the Islamic Jihad.
Millions more were shifted from one entity to another in the Safa Group, then eventually sent overseas, the affidavit says. Often it wound up in financial institutions on the Isle of Man, known like Switzerland for its secretive banking laws. There, the trail goes cold, the affidavit says.
However, government agents still think the money went to terrorism because no other explanation makes sense, the affidavit states.
The Tribune and The New York Times began seeking the affidavit's release in mid-2002, in part because of a government document linking the Virginia case to its investigation in Tampa of Al-Arian, WISE and ICP.
Attorneys for the Safa Group first supported releasing the affidavit but then unexpectedly shifted position and began fighting it.
Dow Jones joined the court fight this month after some in the Safa Group filed libel suits against it, the CBS News program ``60 Minutes'' and author Rita Katz over accounts each had published or broadcast about the Virginia case.
On Friday, the judge held that it was unreasonable for the Virginia group to be pursuing a libel action while simultaneously fighting to keep secret documents that might be vital to the defense of Dow Jones, ``60 Minutes'' and Katz. The judge kept under seal only a small portion of the affidavit to protect ongoing criminal investigations.
Prosecutors supported the affidavit's release.
``It appears to us that, where the targets of an investigation are using the law as a sword against other private litigants who accuse them of involvement with terrorist financing, they should not be able to prevent the unsealing of evidence connecting them to terrorist financing,'' wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg.
Nancy Luque, an attorney representing the Safa Group who opposed the affidavit's release, said Friday evening that it is a gift because it will dispel most of the strongest suspicions about her clients.
``There are no terrorism accusations in it after all their ballyhooing,'' Luque said. ``Kane doesn't know where all the money went so he thinks it went to terrorism. That's not probable cause.''
Most of her clients' involvement with Al-Arian came in the early 1990s, she said. That was long before any accusations that he supported the Jihad and while he was a respected computer scientist at USF.
Few Details On Al-Arian, Rahman
The newly released portions of the affidavit reveal little of the alleged ties between Al-Arian and Sheik Rahman.
He visited Al-Arian's home and spoke at his mosque, the affidavit says. But it offers no details on when the alleged visit occurred or why. ICP records show the sheik also spoke at one of the group's annual conferences.
Rahman is serving life in prison after being convicted of plotting to blow up other New York landmarks and tunnels.
The Virginia investigation began in 1998, largely due to documents seized during the 1995 raid in Tampa of Al-Arian's home and offices. That raid came three weeks after a former Al-Arian associate, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, emerged as the new leader of the Islamic Jihad in Syria.
An unindicted co-conspirator in Al-Arian's case, Taha Jaber Al-Awani, plays a significant role in Kane's affidavit. He is an officer with a number of the Virginia-based groups, including the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which provided much of the money for Al-Arian's WISE organization in Tampa.
Al-Awani attended annual conferences Al-Arian hosted on Palestinian and religious issues. Prosecutors say those conferences were used to raise money for the Islamic Jihad and that Al-Awani knew of the Tampa connection to it.
Kane writes in the affidavit that those like Al-Awani who sent money to Al-Arian and his organizations ``knew that they were sending it to support suicide bombings and terrorism conducted by PIJ.''
Al-Awani also runs the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, which trains Muslim chaplains for the military. Kane's affidavit claims that Al-Awani signed a fatwa, or a religious edict, between December 1988 and November 1989. It proclaimed ``that Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine,'' the affidavit says.
Variety Of Financial Sources
Meanwhile, Al-Awani may have been one of those behind millions of dollars in bank transfers between organizations within the Safa Group and with other entities outside, including banks on the Isle of Man, an autonomous island off Great Britain.
Of $54 million in grants and allocations reported by charities in the Safa Group from 1996 to 2000, the affidavit says, $26 million was transferred to the Isle of Man.
Nearly three-quarters of that money came from the group's members. About 13 percent came from sources in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The transactions were part of a ``conspiracy to impede and impair'' investigators, Kane writes, although he concedes that his belief that the money went to terrorists is partly supposition.
``There appears to be no innocent explanation for the use of layers and layers of transactions between Safa Group companies and charities,'' Kane write, ``other than to throw law enforcement authorities off the trail.''
Al-Arian was fired from his job as a USF computer science professor shortly after his indictment in February. He is in custody at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County and could not be reached for comment. He is scheduled to stand trial in January 2005.
Three other men will stand trial with him. Four other alleged conspirators live abroad and have not been arrested.
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