[iwar] [fc:Muslim.Charities.Under.Scrutiny]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-29 11:33:57
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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This report discusses 2 important ways that Saudi charities can 
contribute to spread of terrorism:

Direct: Saudi charities provide cover for financing terrorists

Indirect: Saudi charities help to spread fundamentalist Whahabi faith
which can inspire radical Islamic elements form which terrorists can be
recruited. 

Muslim Charities Under Scrutiny
Saudi-Funded Groups Deny Ties To Terror but Cite Vulnerability

By David B. Ottaway and Dan Morgan, Washington Post Staff, September 
29, 2001; Page A01

When Mahmoud Jaballah left Egypt in 1991 after numerous arrests for
alleged ties to a terrorist group, he quickly found a job with a Muslim
charity funded by the Saudi government and royal family. 

Now Jaballah, who spent three years working as a teacher in Pakistan for
the Saudi-financed International Islamic Relief Organization, is in
custody in Canada.  He is accused of being a member of the terrorist
group Egyptian Islamic Jihad and of having repeated contact with two top
lieutenants of Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 
11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. 

The IIRO and a closely-affiliated group, the Muslim World League, have
come under growing scrutiny as investigators seek to trace the networks
that support bin Laden's organization, al Qaeda.  Jaballah's murky past
illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between the charities'
legitimate humanitarian activities and their possible assistance to
terrorists. 

Spokesmen for the IIRO and Muslim World League say their organizations
are sometimes victims of terrorist machinations that they have no way of
spotting.  Neither charity was on the list of 27 individuals and groups
whose assets were ordered frozen by President Bush earlier this week. 

Yet time and again, both charities have been the subject of probes into
their use as covers or financial conduits for terrorists.  The
controversy has placed the Saudi monarchy in a delicate position,
because it is both a principal source of funds for the charities and a
prime target of bin Laden. 

In the Philippines, bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohamed Jalal Khalifa,
headed the Manila branches of both the IIRO and Muslim World League in
the early 1990s.  The Saudi-financed charities built mosques and
provided social services to Muslims caught up in a separatist struggle
led by Islamic radicals.  But Philippine police and intelligence
officials charged that Khalifa also used the organizations to funnel
money to militant separatists in Mindanao. 

Khalifa, who is now in Saudi Arabia, hotly denied these allegations in a
phone interview last year with the Filipino Daily Inquirer.  "I am not a
terrorist.  Neither did I help any terrorist group in the Philippines
financially or otherwise," he said.  Khalifa added that he "hates and
condemns" bin Laden, the brother of his second wife. 

The IIRO was also a focus of investigators after the bombing of U.S. 
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.  Kenya temporarily suspended
the organization's permit to operate there, but later reinstated it. 

In the United States, an Orlando resident who had worked for the Muslim
World League in Pakistan was jailed for contempt of court in 1999 after
refusing to explain his contacts with persons who were convicted in the
1998 embassy bombings.  And in India, one man arrested with explosives
in 1999 told police he was working for the IIRO and had received
training in guerrilla camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

In Afghanistan, the Saudi government and its charities initially
provided key financial and political support to the Taliban, who have
been strongly influenced by the Wahabi strain of Islam, a strict brand
of fundamentalism that developed in the Saudi kingdom.  The IIRO alone
has given more than $60 million to the Taliban and people under its
control, according to its secretary general, Adnan Basha. 

IIRO officials deny any terrorist ties and say the organization is
limited to providing humanitarian, social, educational and religious
services to Muslims around the world. 

"IIRO has nothing whatsoever to do with any suspects or suspected
organizations," said Arafat Asahi, a Canadian of Palestinian origin who
directs both the IIRO and the World Muslim League in Canada.  "If some
individuals are discovered later [to be terrorists], the individuals are
to blame."

A senior Saudi official said his country's intelligence services have
been unable to track any charitable donations going to bin Laden. 
Although he did not dispute the U.S.  contention that Saudi donations
may be finding their way to al Qaeda, he said the U.S.  government had
not responded to Saudi requests for leads. 

But in testimony before a Senate committee last week, former State
Department official Jonathan Winer said a number of Islamic charities
have "either provided funds to terrorists or failed to prevent their
funds from being diverted to terrorist use." He added that "a method to
cleanse these charities of their terrorist connections must be found."

For the Saudi ruling royal family, allegations that their charities have
been used by anti-American terrorists are especially embarrassing. 

Members of the royal family, from King Fahd down, express immense pride
in the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend annually to set up
Islamic organizations that provide assistance to Muslims in war-torn
countries, give religious instruction to children and build mosques. 

The Saudi Embassy Web site in Washington says the government has built
210 Islamic centers throughout the world and has taken the initiative to
form the IIRO, among other groups, to serve Muslims inside and outside
the Islamic world. 

These activities, an integral part of Saudi foreign policy, have helped
spread the Wahabi strain of Islam and strengthened the royal family's
claim to legitimacy at home. 

But allegations that the Saudi-backed charities have aided terrorists
complicate the royal family's efforts to preserve a special relationship
with the United States, its principal military shield. 

In addition to concerns that the charities provide cover for terrorists,
the Islamic fundamentalism exported by the Saudi government has helped
inspire radical Islamic elements, some western experts say. 

"They [the terrorists] recruit within these conservative Islamic
circles," said Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar at the National Center
for Scientific Research in Paris. 

Roy expressed concern that the Saudis were losing control of the aid
they give for building mosques in dozens of countries.  But some IIRO
officials say that the Saudi government in fact keeps a tight rein over
their activities. 

For example, Asahi, the Muslim World League and IIRO director in Canada,
said all applications for aid projects go first to the Saudi Embassy and
only then are evaluated by the charities.  "We are controlled in all our
activities and plans by the government of Saudi Arabia," he said, noting
that his own salary also is paid by the Saudis. 

The movements of Mahmoud Jaballah, as described in Canadian court
documents, illustrate how suspected terrorists may be using the
Saudi-financed charities to support themselves, travel from country to
country and establish legitimate identities. 

Jaballah, who describes himself as an Egyptian fundamentalist, fled that
country in 1991 after seven arrests in 10 years on suspicion of
involvement in plots to assassinate Egyptian politicians.  While in
Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage visa, he was hired by the IIRO to teach at
a Pakistani school for orphans at a salary of $800 a month, according to
court documents. 

In 1994, he fled Pakistan using false Iraqi and Saudi passports.  After
brief stays in Yemen and Azerbaijan, he arrived in Canada in 1996. 
Canadian immigration officials said Jaballah told them he had gone to
IIRO because he was "in need of assistance."

During his first Canadian deportation hearing in Ottawa in 1999, a key
defense was that he had held legitimate employment with the IIRO in
Pakistan.  The Canadian judge ruled in his favor after noting that he
had never been formally charged in Egypt but would have "some reason to
be concerned" if he returned to Egypt. 

But this August, Canadian immigration authorities again asked for his
deportation and detained him.  The new allegations, citing Interpol, the
international police organization, said Jaballah was wanted in Egypt on
charges of belonging to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the outlawed terrorist
organization that attempted to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in
1995. 

The official complaint said the Canadian Security Intelligence had
"reason to believe" he had engaged in terrorism and been in repeated
contact with the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad's cell in London.  It
also stated that Jaballah's lawyer in Egypt had been a close associate
of Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian who became bin Laden's chief adviser
when Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda effectively merged three years
ago. 

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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