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Feds raid Islam 'relief agency'
The Missouri-based Islamic America Relief Agency, raided this week by federal, state and local law enforcement, is being tied to terror groups internationally, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Thirteen police agencies, including Columbia, Mo., police, the U.S. Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, joined in the raid. While the IARA maintains it was founded in 1985 to provide health-care services and emergency relief to refugees and orphaned children, the Treasury Department said the group has been tied to some 40 terror organizations worldwide, including al-Qaida and the Taliban. FBI agents removed computers, file cabinets, a fax machine and several boxes of files and documents. They also seized cars, but no arrests were made. Agents said the raid was part of a long-running, ongoing investigation of the agency. Last week, the Justice Department blocked "all accounts, funds and assets" of the IARA and its affiliates in the United States. U.S. law enforcement officials say overseas branches of the group provided "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to Bin Laden in 1999. The Treasury Department also maintains the group was responsible for laundering money for the Palestinian territories to support terrorist activities. Sources say the group has been used by terror-supporting states, including Sudan, to spread radical Islam. The search extended to two homes, one in Columbia and the other in Connecticut, according to law enforcement officials. The charity found itself under scrutiny in 2001 when federal prosecutors, during a trial in New York, alleged that Ziyad Khalil, a former Columbia College student with connections to the agency, bought a $7,500 satellite telephone later used by bin Laden to organize the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Newsweek reported in February 2000 that Khalil had been detained in Jordan and provided FBI agents with critical information about bin Laden's U.S. operations. Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-10-17 |
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