Legal News

DOJ Chasing Islamic Charities for Terrorism Financing

By Dan Slater

“We incapacitate the bad guys. It might not be the sexiest way of doing it, and if we get criticized, so be it.” — Kenneth Wainstein, the DOJ’s national-security chief, on the investigation into the financing of terrorist organizations by Islamic charities

Back in December of 2001, the Bush administration, as part of its domestic war on terror, declared legal and financial war on groups it believed aided terrorism sponsors, a move that reportedly generated sanctions against a wide swath of organizations. Now U.S. counterterrorism officials in the U.S. and the Middle East are reportedly pursuing what they describe as a second constellation of Islamic charities that have sprouted up to raise funds that help Islamic militants in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and other conflict areas. Here’s the report.

The government’s pursuit of these charities is highly-controversial for many reasons. Namely, critics say that the italicized quote above, by Kenneth Wainstein (pictured), characterizes the DOJ’s devil-may-care approach to investigating charities. Muslim leaders and civil libertarians focus on the alleged failure of investigators to turn up actual evidence linking charities to individual acts of terrorism.

But in an interview, Wainstein (pictured) said that intelligence reports continue to find that, even though many of the estimated six million Muslims in the U.S. give to charities that promote Islam and provide welfare to needy Muslims abroad, some of those charities are being used by terrorist groups to provide communications, visas and medicine for groups fighting the U.S. military or U.S. allies.

The DOJ now alleges that fund-raising efforts in the U.S. have shifted to at least two existing groups that were missed in the initial sweep: a Boston-based charity called Care International, and another in Columbia, Mo., called the Islamic American Relief Agency. Care International’s officers were recently convicted of tax fraud in Boston federal court, while backers of the Missouri group are under indictment for similar offenses.

Critics have chided the government for keeping much of its evidence of terrorist connections secret and resorting to nonterrorism charges, such as tax and money-laundering violations, to put the leaders of some charities out of business.

In response, prosecutors argue that, even if intelligence shows signs of terrorism support, it’s difficult to obtain the kind of unambiguous evidence that will stand up in court to prove money ended up with terrorists overseas. Says one federal prosecutor: “Once it hits a foreign bank, it is gone to us.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).