FBI raids pro-Republicans
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday March 25, 2002
The Guardian
The target of an anti-terrorist raid in the United States last week
provided funds for an Islamic group with close ties to the
Republican party and the White House.
The Safa trust, a Saudi-backed charity, has provided funds for a
political group called the Islamic Institute, which was set up to
mobilise support for the Republican party. It shares an office in
Washington with the Republican activist Grover Norquist.
The institute, founded in 1999 to win influence in the Republican
party, has helped to arrange meetings between senior Bush
officials and Islamic leaders, according to the report in
Newsweek magazine. Its s chairman, Khaled Saffuri, and Mr
Norquist cooperated to arrange the meetings.
The trust gave $20,000 (£14,000) to the institute, which also
received $20,000 from a board member of the Success
Foundation, according to the report. The institute has also
received money from abroad, including$200,000 from Qatar and
$55,000 from Kuwait. The institute says that none of the money
came with strings attached.
Mr Norquist, who is a member of the institute's board, said that
it existed "to promote democracy and free markets. Any effort to
imply guilt by association is incompetent McCarthyism".
It is understood that a series of raids last week were prompted
by the transfer of funds from the Safa trust and other groups to
accounts based in the Isle of Man. They have not led to any
charges.
Islamic groups have complained that many of the raids being
carried out on Islamic organisations are speculative and violate
their civil liberties.
In another development, the possibility that one of the
September 11 hijackers had been exposed to anthrax has been
explored by the FBI.
A Florida doctor who treated Ahmed Ibrahim al-Haznawi for a leg
wound last summer concluded that the likeliest cause of the
injury was cutaneous anthrax. But the FBI said yesterday that it
had found no evidence of a link between the hijackers and
anthrax.
guardian.co.uk |
