RUTHFULLY YOURS

On July 20, 2016, federal prosecutors successfully secured a guilty plea from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization known as the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA). The Missouri-based organization, also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency-USA, was an affiliate of a Sudan-based international relief organization of the same name.

The organization was raided in October of 2004 under suspicion of violating Iraq sanctions, money laundering and terrorism finance to Al Qaeda and Hamas.

The plea deal comes after the Department of Justice had already secured guilty pleas from IARA fundraiser Abdel Azim El-Siddig, Mubarak Hamed, Ahmed Mustafa, and former Republican Congressman Mark Siljander of Michigan.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department IARA had close ties to the Maktab Al-Khidamat (MK), also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, the precursor to Al Qaeda, co-founded by Osama Bin Laden and Muslim Brotherhood member and leading Jihadist thinker Abdullah Azzam.

IARA regional leader Mohammed Adam el-Sheikh is Imam of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where President Obama delivered a major speech earlier this year. El-Sheikh was a co-founder of the Muslim American Society, described by U.S. federal prosecutors as the “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sheikh replaced Al Qaeda leader Anwar Awlaki at the Muslim Brotherhood led Dar al-Hijrah Mosque.

IARA was incorporated by Eric Vickers, executive director of the American Muslim Council, an organization founded by Al Qaeda financier and self-identified Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi.

Among IARA’s earliest founders was Abdl Mouhaymen Al Sibai, whose name appears in the 1992 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood phone directory as Masul (leader) of the Michigan area.

Other IARA leaders included educational director Zayed Khaleel, a Missouri-based Palestinian American who served both as a Al Qaeda finance and Procurement specialist who supplied Osama Bin Laden with communications equipment, and as a webmaster for the terror organization Hamas. Khaleel worked closely with the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the Muslim brotherhood organization focused on promoting Pro-Hamas propaganda. IAP played a key role in raising funds for the Holy Land Foundation(HLF), whose leaders were convicted of 108 terror related felonies. The Holy Land Foundation was also named explicitly in the recently release 28-page Congressional 9/11 report.

Included in the U.S. Government’s evidence exhibit list were references to other HLF linked organizations. Specifically, multiple fund transfers from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and its subsidiary the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) to the IARA. In the Holy Land Foundation trial a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government provided “ample evidence” to associated ISNA and NAIT with the terrorist group Hamas. Specifically named, is late ISNA leader Mahboob Khan, founder of the An-Noor Mosque in Santa Clara, California, which hosted Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri during a fundraising visit.

IARA had been one of 25 organizations investigated by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee regarding ties to terrorism funding, many of which would later be investigated, raided, and or designated for terrorism activities.

IARA had a history of being a respectable Islamic charity prior to the raid, even receiving millions from from USAID, before being debarred for suspected terror ties. In response to the crackdown IARA hired former Representative Mark Siljander to lobby to remove the group from terror-related lists. Siljander’s failure to register as a foreign agent, and lies to federal agents led to his inclusion in the terror finance case.

The guilty plea this week by the Islamic American Relief Agency is a reminder that the apparent respectability offered by government cooperation is often used as a shield for illicit activity. Yet organizations with suspected ties to Islamic terrorism continue to receive U.S. government funds.

Much like the recently released 28-page congressional report on the involvement of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, the IARA conviction is also a reminder of the days after 9/11 when the U.S. government was engaged in a serious counterterrorism struggle targeting not just individual terrorists, but the larger supporting networks.

This was done despite that these networks revealed links to foreign government officials and powerful Middle East banking or financial interests and despite that proper investigation required the surveillance of Islamist mosques and nonprofit organizations.

Unfortunately this model of U.S. counterterrorism has been widely abandoned in favor of a “countering violent extremism” model that promotes a “whack-a-mole” strategy by assuming, absent evidence, that terrorists are unconnected to a wider network. As a result, since President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. government has not designated a single Islamic charity for terror ties.

The IARA conviction thus serves as a kind of time capsule for early, and successful counterterrorism efforts, but one which is unlikely to be repeated unless dramatic changes are made to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement efforts.