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The Ledger Enquirer - August 23, 2004 Panel's report raises questions about BY LAURIE COHEN CHICAGO - The government's shutdown of two Chicago-area Islamic charities after the Sept. 11 attacks has yet to produce a terrorism-related criminal conviction and "raises substantial civil liberty concerns," according to the staff of the independent commission that investigated the attacks. Authorities froze the assets of the charities - Global Relief Foundation of Bridgeview and Benevolence International Foundation of Palos Hills - before any official finding that they were aiding al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. The action put Global Relief and Benevolence International out of business. But since they were shuttered in December 2001, the government hasn't proven in court that they were guilty of any terrorism-related crimes. The commission staff examined the moves against the two charities as part of a report on U.S. efforts to combat terror funding. The study also reviewed in detail a case against the Al-Barakaat money-transmission network, which fell apart because of insufficient evidence. The report raises questions about the government's claims of success in its terrorism financing investigations. It also echoes concerns of civil liberty abuses raised for years by Chicago-area Muslims and other supporters of the closed charities…. The 152-page study was posted to the commission's Web site on Saturday afternoon, just after intelligence officials finished reviewing it and shortly before the panel closed its doors. The commission didn't formally deliberate on the report because it had not been completed by the panel's last meeting on July 22, a commission spokesman said. Before Sept. 11, Global Relief and Benevolence International had been under FBI scrutiny for years because of alleged ties to terrorist organizations. Government concerns about the groups "were not baseless," the report said. "There may not have been a smoking gun proving that these entities funded terrorism, but the evidence of their links to terrorists and jihadists (or holy warriors) is significant," the staff concluded…... Based on CIA concerns that Global Relief might have been involved in a plot to attack the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, the government in December 2001 orchestrated raids on foreign offices of both charities. The allegations of a link with such an attack were never corroborated, according to the report. Simmons said he had not been aware of any rumored links to weapons of mass destruction. "It's almost too shocking to even react to," he said. "By making that kind of allegation you can justify anything." The overseas raids were followed by similar searches of the charities' Illinois offices. The charities' assets were frozen pending an investigation of their alleged terrorism links. The action, which required only the approval of one Treasury Department official, was authorized under the newly passed USA Patriot Act. The approach "raises substantial civil liberty concerns," the report said, because it allows the government to "shut down an organization without any formal determination of wrongdoing." The charities' assets were temporarily frozen for about 10 months before the Treasury Department officially designated them as terrorism supporters. According to the report, a senior agency official in an April 2002 memo raised questions about the fairness of the temporary asset freeze. Both charities went out of business. Enaam Arnaout, the executive director of Benevolence International, later pleaded guilty to defrauding donors to the charity by diverting money to Islamic fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya, but the government dropped allegations that he aided terrorists. No criminal charges have been brought against Global Relief, although its co-founder was deported after an immigration judge deemed him to be a security risk. The commission staff said the failure to win terrorism-related criminal convictions was notable because of the personal involvement of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago-based U.S. attorney widely regarded as one of the country's top terrorism prosecutors. The investigations of the two charities highlight "the difference between seeing links to terrorists and proving funding of terrorists, and the problem of defining the threshold of information necessary to take disruptive action," the report said…. http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/9476716.htm |