Some Charities Suspected of Terrorist Role
Feleke
The New York Times
February 19, 2000
Some Charities Suspected of Terrorist Role
By JUDITH MILLER
Government officials investigating a decade of international terrorist attacks
say they have found a common thread, Islamic charities and relief organizations
that they suspect are being used to move men, money and weapons across borders.
American officials said Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile charged with
masterminding the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in East Africa, relied on
at least nine of the groups in his recent operations.
Other charities and relief groups, the Americans said, have been linked to a
recent plot to bomb historic and tourist sites in Jordan, the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center and terrorist attacks in Egypt against tourists and
Government officials.
"These charities and relief groups are a crucial part of terrorism's
infrastructure," said one official who monitors terrorism closely. "Money
people give for worthy causes should not wind up buying explosives or phony
passports. But we still know too little about how Islamic fundamentalists use
and abuse these groups."
Most of the 6,000 Islamic groups operating worldwide are considered legitimate
and provide emergency relief in dangerous and desperate places with the support
of friendly states. In addition, the officials said, the charities are often
unaware that terrorists have used them as cover.
"Most of these groups do some good works in some places," one official said.
"And often, only a few officials or a single chapter involving a small part of
the charity's leadership or resources is being used."
Although the administration has previously investigated alleged links between
individual Islamic charities and specific terrorist groups, this is the first
time that it is scrutinizing a block of such groups to determine whether they
are being used, wittingly or not, by Islamic terrorist networks. As such,
officials say, the inquiry is a major expansion of the government's
counterterrorism efforts. Israel has been pressing the United States for years
to spearhead an international crackdown on Islamic charities and private relief
groups.
But officials said Washington had been reluctant to interfere in a domain
safeguarded by constitutional guarantees of free association and separation of
church and state. In addition, officials said, they lacked evidence that could
be used in public court proceedings.
In recent months, American officials have circulated within the government a
list of more than 30 groups that they are examining for links to terrorism, at
least two of which are based in the United States.
Last month, a team of officials led by the Treasury Department visited Saudi
Kuwait, Bahrain and other Arab states to discuss specific charities with their
Middle Eastern counterparts.
In Canada, officials said they planned to seek new legal authority to
confiscate the assets of charities that acted as fronts for terrorism. This
measure, the officials said, is part of a broad antiterrorism package that the
Government will soon propose to Parliament. Canada cut off government financing
in 1997 to Human Concern International, a Canadian-based group, for what
official documents call the group's "terrorist connections."
That group is also being investigated by the United States, American and
Canadian officials said. The director of the charity, Kaleem Akhtar, denied
that his group had terrorist links and said it was "totally wrong" to defame
groups that did such good work.
American officials said their investigations into the role of such Islamic
charities and relief groups had been prompted by recent terrorist attacks and
plots. The officials acknowledged that the scrutiny was politically and
diplomatically sensitive.
American officials said charities could provide excellent cover for terrorist
groups, because relief workers are welcomed almost everywhere and their
shipments of supplies are rarely checked by border guards or the police.
Discovering the origins and supporters of such charities may be difficult,
investigators said. While the United States, Canada and several European states
require tax-exempt charities to file at least annual reports listing their
assets, expenditures and officers, many states, including several in the Middle
East, do not.
One instance in which investigators said they believed that the role of
charities was crucial was the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
in 1998, crimes that killed more than 200 people and wounded thousands.
Prosecutors said material seized from the Nairobi office of the Mercy
International Relief Agency includes records of calls to the cellular telephone
of Mr. bin Laden. Another document found at the office, dated two weeks before
the bombings, refers to "getting the weapons from Somalia."
Mercy, based in Ireland, was one of five private associations that Kenya closed
weeks after the bombing. The government said those groups had "deviated from
development objectives" and "posed a serious threat" to Kenya's security.
In recent days, officials disclosed that a roommate of one the men charged with
plotting to bomb targets in the United States had worked for Mercy in Dublin.
The State Department stepped up its efforts to investigate the charities last
year, after officials involved in counterterrorism found that the United States
government had inadvertently helped support questionable charities. The State
Department had included a charity that counterterrorism officials say has ties
to Sudan's governing Islamic party on a list of 50 groups through which
Americans could aid Kosovo refugees. The State Department has identified Sudan
as a terrorism sponsor.
The charity, the Islamic African Relief Agency, also received two grants in
1998 worth $4.2 million for work in Mali from the State Department's Agency for
International Development. The grants to the charity, which is one of the 30
being scrutinized, were cut off in December at the State Department's request
on grounds that they were not in America's "national security interests," an
A.I.D. official said. The organization's president said he was appealing the
decision.
Speaking from Columbia, Mo., where the charity has been registered since 1984,
its director, Ahmed Mubarak, said that his group had "nothing to do with Sudan"
and that Washington had never accused it of any terrorist-related activity. "We
are simply trying to help people wherever they need help, Mr. Mubarak said."
The list of more than 30 groups with suspected terrorist ties includes two in
the United States, the Global Relief Foundation Inc. and the Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development, in Richardson, Tex.
American officials have been looking into Holy Land since the mid-90's. Some
government officials recommended that the group be prosecuted in 1997 for
supporting Hamas, the militant Islamic group. But others opposed the effort,
fearing that it would expose intelligence sources and spur public criticism of
the administration as anti-Muslim.
The inquiry appears to have been revived. Responding recently to a lawsuit by
Steven Emerson, a journalist who follows militant Islamic groups, the State
Department said it could not make documents about Holy Land public because the
group was the subject of "an ongoing law-enforcement proceeding."
A lawyer for the group, Donya C. Witherspoon, said Holy Land had no involvement
with terrorism and had been very careful that its donations cannot be used by
terrorist groups. "Their whole purpose and emphasis is antiterrorist," Ms.
Witherspoon said.
Contending that it was a front for Hamas, Israel closed the charity and four
others in May 1997.
An Israeli official said the government had provided "thousands of pages of
information" about the group to American officials, urging them and other
Western governments to close it.
A lawyer for Global Relief, Stanley Cohen, called the investigation of that
foundation a "scurrilous attack" and "another of the government's pathetic
attempts to sully committed Islamic organizations."
Reports filed for 1998, the most recent available, said Global Relief, of
Bridgeview, Ill., had an income of $1.7 million and distributed "food,
clothing, relief supplies" to refugees, flood victims and orphans.