Suspects linked to bin Laden, Iraq
Arrests of Arabs in Idaho, New York target terror financing
February 27, 2003
The Saudi man arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force yesterday in Idaho has ties to close associates of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to four Arab men charged at the same time with channeling funds to Iraq.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen – a University of Idaho doctoral candidate supported by the Saudi government – was a terrorist bagman, according to a federal criminal justice source quoted by a Seattle newspaper.
"He's in touch with people who could pick up the phone, call [bin Laden], and he would take the call," the source told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The 34-year-old Saudi father of two is accused of raising and distributing money through websites that promote terrorism and violence against the United States, according to an indictment yesterday that charges him with visa fraud and making false statements.
But investigators say the accusations do not reflect the central role they believe al-Hussayen has played in the flow of al-Qaida cash, the paper said.
The Washington Post reported today that al-Hussayen was in the U.S. on an expired visa at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Al-Hussayen's arrest is linked to another indictment returned yesterday that charges four Arab men living near Syracuse with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iraq by allegedly funneling $2.7 million to unnamed persons in Baghdad through a charity group called Help the Needy.
Federal officials said the defendants in both cases are connected by their association with the Islamic Assembly of North America, or IANA, the parent group of Help the Needy.
Al-Hussayen is charged with supplying IANA, a Saudi charity operating in Ann Arbor, Mich., with money from overseas sources, providing computer expertise and with failing to disclose his relationship with the group.
The IANA says its aim is to coordinate the efforts of many groups in North America engaged in the propagation of Islam, or dawah. Websites operated by the organization, which Al-Hussayen helped build, praise suicide bombings and promote the use of airplanes as terror weapons, the indictment said.
One IANA website reprinted three fatwas – Islamic legal opinions – that encouraged "martyrdom" attacks against enemy targets just four months before Sept. 11, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported last August.
The paper said IANA grew out of Dar Makkah, a dissolved Denver-based organization that published "The Friday Report," a publication that included a compilation of fatwas issued by Muslim sheiks.
Prosecutors at news conferences in New York and Idaho yesterday declined to explain further how al-Hussayen's activities meshed with the fundraising for Iraq, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Derden, a prosecutor in Idaho, said the "cases have a common thread."
One of the men charged in New York, oncologist Rafil Dhafir, 55, was identified last year as vice president and a board member for IANA. At a London conference last June, Dhafir also was introduced as founder and president of Help the Needy and a graduate of the University of Baghdad School of Medicine.
Also named in the indictment were Maher Zagha, 34, a Jordanian who attended college in New York state; Ayman Jarwan, 33, of Syracuse, a Jordanian citizen born in Saudi Arabia who worked as the executive director of Help the Needy; and Osameh al-Wahaidy, 41, of Fayetteville, a Jordanian citizen employed as a spiritual leader at the Auburn Correctional Facility and a math instructor at the State University of New York at Oswego.
Jarwan was identified as office manager of Help the Needy in a Sept. 25, 2001, Detroit Free Press story that indicated the group had recently separated itself from IANA and relocated to Syracuse.
The Detroit paper said IANA had come under scrutiny because the name of its president, Mohammed Alahmari, was on a list of people the FBI said it wanted to question in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Alahmari, 42, told the Free Press that he called the FBI in Detroit and was told he should not have been on the list. The Detroit daily said an FBI special agent at that office repeatedly declined to comment on Alahmari's status.
In the Sept. 25, 2001, story, Jarwan declined to say how much money the group raises each year, but he indicated that half of the revenue is sent to needy people in Iraq for items such as food, clothing and medicine.
He denied having links to terrorist groups.
Alahmari said in an October 2001 New York Times article on the international propagation of Saudi Arabia's strict Wahhabi sect of Islam that about half of IANA's money came from the Saudi government. The rest came from private donors, most of them Saudi, he said. Alahmari noted later in the article that he estimates half the mosques and Islamic schools in the U.S. have been built with the help of money from Saudi Arabia.
Expired visa
Al-Hussayen was in the U.S. on an expired visa at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Ahmed Kattan, deputy chief of mission for the Saudi embassy in Washington, according to the Washington Post. Kattan said that during the ensuing government crackdown on INS violators, he returned to Saudi Arabia and obtained a new visa.
The indictment alleges that al-Hussayen received a monthly living stipend and tuition aid from the Saudi government.
He traveled to Saudi Arabia for a time in 2000, then again in early 2002, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Last year, the university helped him apply for a visa extension "for continued attendance at this school."
Al-Hussayen denounced the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks according to the University of Idaho newspaper, calling them "immoral attacks" on "innocent civilians."
Probing al-Qaida network
Special-Agent-in-Charge Chip Burrus of the FBI's Salt Lake City field office said the investigation began as an intelligence inquiry into al-Qaida's financial network. Criminal justice sources said, according to the Seattle P-I, that the FBI used many of the means of electronic surveillance at its disposal including wiretaps and intercepts of e-mails.
The paper reported that its August story on the use of Islamic charities as a conduit to finance terrorism changed the course of the investigation by alerting Al-Hussayen and his colleagues. At that time, a Post-Intelligencer reporter unsuccessfully attempted to interview Al-Hussayen.
Burrus, noting that "we are at the beginning of the trail," indicated at the news conference in Idaho that the flow of funds is massive and complex.
Al-Hussayen is at the nexus of millions of dollars flowing from Saudi Arabia to the United States and from Al-Hussayen to individuals and Islamic organizations in the United States as well as Egypt, Canada, Jordan and Pakistan, the Seattle paper said, citing sources, court documents and public statements made yesterday.
The government alleges that Al-Hussayen has used at least six bank accounts in Indiana, Texas, Idaho and Michigan to accept about $300,000 from inside and outside the United States. From those accounts, he transferred "large sums of monies to the IANA" and to individuals in Cairo; Montreal; Riyadh; Amman, Jordan; and Islamabad, Pakistan, the indictment says.
The government also alleges that the Saudi student set up a Michigan checking account in his name designated for "a leading IANA official."
"The story of this case was a man welcomed to the state of Idaho to study at one of the best computer science programs anywhere," said Tom Moss, U.S. attorney for Idaho. "This is where our government sends people to train."
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