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Joe Duffy, right, attorney for Enaam Arnaout, and Matt Piers, attorney for the Benevolence International Foundation
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CHICAGO,
October 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The executive director
of a U.S.-based Muslim charity was indicted Wednesday, October 9, for
allegedly funneling money to “Islamist terrorist groups”, five
months after he was originally detained by U.S. authorities as a part
of raids which have targeted Muslim charity organizations in the
country.
According
to the indictment, Enaam Arnaout channeled cash to Al-Qaeda, the
mujahideen in Chechnya and Muslim “guerrillas” in Bosnia over a
10-year period using the Illinois-based charity, Benevolence
International Foundation, as a front, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
The
U.S. authorities claimed that the charitable donations paid for
anti-mine boots and an X-ray machine for the Chechen mujahideen, and a
satellite phone for the Hezb-e-Islami in Afghanistan as well as other
logistical support.
U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the criminal indictment, the first
to stem from the U.S. government’s post-September 11 crackdown on
U.S.-based Muslim charities, underlined the United States’
determination to go after the money men who bankroll international
terrorists.
“There
is no moral distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks
and those who finance terrorist attacks,” he said.
Arnaout
faces up to 90 years in jail, without the possibility of parole, if
convicted on the charges of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy to
racketeer.
The
40-year-old Syrian-born U.S. citizen is currently in administrative
detention in a Chicago correctional center, where he has been held
since he was arrested April 30 on perjury charges in connection with a
civil suit he brought against the U.S. government, AFP said.
Arnaout’s
lawyers attacked the indictment, saying it was the result of a witch
hunt against their client.
“The
government has simply dressed up the same allegations it has brought
repeatedly against Mr Arnaout,” said Joseph Duffy, citing two
previous perjury charges brought against his client.
Arnaout,
he said, was merely a pawn, in the war on terrorism which had
deteriorated “into a paranoid war on any Muslim whoever had any
contact however innocent with any terrorist or suspected terrorist or
acquaintance of any suspected terrorist.”
The
U.S. government claimed its case against Arnaout rests heavily on
documents recovered from BIF’s offices in Bosnia in March, 2002,
which linked Arnaout directly to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
The
papers detail the 1988 founding meeting of al-Qaeda; the text of the
oath of allegiance taken by Al-Qaeda members; personnel files of
Mujahideen fighters trained in Afghanistan under Bin Laden’s
direction and a list of wealthy sponsors from Saudi Arabia.
“It
is chilling that the origins of Al-Qaeda were discovered in a charity
claiming to do good,” Ashcroft said.
But
Duffy pointed out that Arnaout has never denied knowing Bin Laden,
although he has consistently denied misusing charitable donations to
support terrorist groups.
And
at the time of Arnaout’s contacts with Bin Laden in the 1980s, the
U.S. government was itself funding the mujahideen or freedom fighters
in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet army, he added.
The
case is “an amalgamation of falsehoods, half-truths, and of guilt by
association compounded by a massive effort to re-write history for the
past 15 years,” said Matt Piers, a lawyer for BIF.
On
September 14, a U.S. district judge had handed a victory to the
charity organization, tossing out perjury charges against the
organization and its director Arnaout.
The
ruling, handed down by Judge Joan Gottschall, had paved the way for
Arnaout, 39, to be released after four months in custody.
Arnaout
has been held without bond since he was arrested April 30 at his home
in suburban Chicago on charges that he allegedly lied about his
organization’s ties to military groups, including Al-Qaeda and the
Chechen mujahedin.
However,
Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of
Illinois, said he would seek to keep Arnaout behind bars by filing
charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements prior to
a hearing Monday.
Earlier,
American Muslim and civil rights activists asserted that the charges
against Benevolence Foundation, and other American Muslim charities,
are nothing more than the latest arsenal in the U.S.’s
“witch-hunt” of American Muslims.
“This
is definitely another witch-hunt,” Shaker Al Sayed of the Muslim
American Society [MAS] told IslamOnline in the early days of the
investigation.
“The
established facts are that in the past several months the U.S.
Department of Justice [DOJ] has arrested or detained thousands of
Muslims, and in the end charged no one with any crimes.
“The
maximum was charging one person with knowing one of the hijackers of
September 11. And even that charge was thrown out of court by the
judge for government misconduct,” El Sayed continued, referring to
Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling earlier this year that the
Justice Department has “overreached in imprisoning as ‘material
witnesses’ men the authorities believe might have information for
grand juries investigating terrorism.”
U.S.
authorities raided BIF offices in Palos Hills, Illinois in December
last year and froze the charity's assets as part of its post September
11 clampdown on U.S.-based Muslim charities it suspected of channeling
money to so called “militants”.
BIF
sued to have the block on their assets frozen in January 2002, and
when Arnaout later indicated he intended to travel to Saudi Arabia,
federal prosecutors stepped in and filed perjury charges, alleging he
lied in court filings submitted as part of that lawsuit.
Arnaout
has repeatedly asserted that the foundation “never provided
meaningful support for organizations engaged in violence, terrorist
activities or military operations of any nature,” in a sworn
affidavit filed as part of the civil suit the charity has brought
against U.S. authorities.
