Back on topic; Muslim Brothers to the rescue...
In 1998, before his petitioning of the US government to unfreeze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, a front for financing terrorism, Khaled Elgindy was calling to lift sanctions in Iraq with another front relief org called International Relief Association.
International Relief Association is aka the International Islamic Relief Organization.
"Sanctions are not the clean alternative to war that we thought they were," said Khalid Elgindy, who delivered humanitarian aid to Iraqis in May with a U.S. group called the International Relief Association.
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sane-boston.org
Islamic group funded terror from Ontario: CIA Saudi aid organization
Stewart Bell
National Post, Friday, August 22, 2003
A U.S. intelligence report claims a Saudi humanitarian organization that operates in Canada has funded "militant training camps," shipped weapons to Afghanistan and had ties to Osama bin Laden.
The International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is named in the 1996 document as one of 15 organizations that "employ members or otherwise facilitate the activities of terrorist groups in Bosnia."
The document ties the group, which has an office in Ontario, to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, a man convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots to kill the Pope and attack U.S. airliners.
"The majority of Hamas members in the Philippines are employed by the organization," it says, adding, "the IIRO helps fund six militant training camps in Afghanistan, according to a clandestine source."
The report also claims the Bosnian and Swedish offices of the Ottawa-based charity Human Concern International were connected to terrorism and weapons smuggling, but a spokesman said the group never had offices in either country.
The report was obtained from the law firm Motley Rice, which has filed a class-action suit on behalf of family members of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. The suit targets dozens of Islamic charities and Saudi officials for their alleged roles in financing al-Qaeda.
The document was identified as a "CIA report" by special agent David Kane, an official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a court affidavit made public this week in Virginia.
Special Agent Kane cited Canadian immigration documents as evidence the IIRO also operates under the name Muslim World League (MWL), which is a government-registered charity in Canada.
The allegations against the IIRO and MWL, are controversial because both groups are funded by the Saudi government, which denies it financially supports armed Islamic extremist factions.
The CIA report cited by Special Agent Kane claims about one-third of the 50 international Islamic non-profit organizations were supporting terrorism or employing terrorist suspects. While Muslim charities help the needy, they were also fostering violence, it said.
"Where Muslims are engaged in armed conflict, some Islamic organizations provide military aid as part of a 'humanitarian' package," it says. The governments of Muslim states support the major charities but are unable to monitor how the money is spent, it added.
The document shows that at least five years before the Sept. 11 attacks Western intelligence officials were aware Islamic charities were funnelling money to terrorist causes.
At the time, Yugoslavia was the focus of radical Islamic organizations because of the war between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims.
"We have information that nearly one third of the Islamic NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the Balkans have facilitated the activities of Islamic groups that engage in terrorism, including the Egyptian Al-Gamaat Al Islamiyya, Palestinian Hamas, Algerian groups and Lebanese Hezbollah," the report says. "Some of the terrorist groups have access to credentials for the UN High Commission for Refugees and other UN staffs in the former Yugoslavia."
The report claims the head of the Muslim World League branch in Peshawar, Pakistan, "was illicitly supplying League documentation and arms to militants in Afghanistan and Tajikistan."
The Muslim World League is based in Etobicoke. Its Internet site says it is the Canadian branch of an international Islamic organization headquartered in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Among its stated aims are promoting Islam, distributing the Koran, introducing Islam to Canadians and helping the Imams who deliver Friday sermons at Canadian mosques.
Several suspected Islamic terrorists arrested in Canada have been former employees of the IIRO, including Mahmoud Jaballah, a Toronto man who is a member of the Egyptian group Al Jihad.
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July 21, 1998, Tuesday, Final Edition
Iraq sanctions questioned;
33 House Democrats urge lifting postwar economic barriers
Jason Keyser; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Thirty-three House Democrats and a lone Republican urged President Clinton yesterday to lift 8-year-old economic sanctions against Iraq that were imposed after its invasion of Kuwait.
"This is the beginning of a broad questioning of the viability of sanctions regimes," said Phyllis Bennis, a policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington policy group.
She joined other policy experts at a briefing for reporters and congressional staff on Capitol Hill hosted by the Arab-American Institute.
The House members, including Rep. Tom Campbell, California Republican, sent a letter to President Clinton yesterday calling on the administration to "re-examine the intended goals and the actual effects of these sanctions."
"Congressman Campbell feels we need to take a step back and re-examine the sanctions regime," said Suhail Khan, spokesman for Mr. Campbell, the only Republican to join with the Democrats. "Mr. [Saddam] Hussein is using the economic sanctions as an excuse not to feed those who are suffering," he said.
The United Nations imposed the sanctions after the Aug. 2, 1990, invasion and they cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors declare Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq is permitted to sell $5 billion worth of oil every six months. But the sanctions have prevented Iraq from importing the materials necessary to rebuild the oil infrastructure that was destroyed in the 1991 bombing of Iraq, humanitarian workers have argued.
Iraq says about 1.5 million children have died in the past seven years from disease and malnutrition directly attributed to the sanctions.
"Sanctions are not the clean alternative to war that we thought they were," said Khalid Elgindy, who delivered humanitarian aid to Iraqis in May with a U.S. group called the International Relief Association.
"More people have died as a result of the sanctions in the last eight years than died during the allied bombing in 1991," he told reporters. He said 1 million people had died since the sanctions were imposed.
The United States opposes ending the sanctions.
The power to lift the sanctions lies solely with Iraq, P.J. Crowley, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a telephone interview.
"We've carefully sponsored a sanctions regime intended to aid the Iraqi people without aiding Hussein," he said.
Congress is beginning to rethink the effectiveness of sanctions, which have become a U.S. foreign policy tool. Sanctions automatically leveled against India and Pakistan because of their nuclear tests in May have forced Congress to re-examine the wisdom of using them.
Congress overwhelmingly voted last week to waive the sanctions to allow Mr. Clinton other diplomatic options.
Also, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has formed a committee to review sanctions legislation and congressional approach to foreign policy.
The letter from the 34 members of Congress, the latest congressional attack on sanctions, led by Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, calls on the administration to "de-link economic sanctions on Iraq, which have been a political and humanitarian failure, from military sanctions."
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danielpipes.org
That List of Islamist Organizations under U.S. Senate Scrutiny. The Senate Committee on Finance today released a letter its chairman and ranking member, Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus, had sent on Dec. 22, 2003, to the Internal Revenue Service. In it, they asked for a long list of specifics ("Form 990s and Form 990 PFs, including the donors list for both types; Form 1023s, the charities' applications for tax exempt status, and any and all materials from examinations, audits and other investigations, including criminal investigations") about charities, foundations and tax-exempt organizations, groups or entities that have been designated or listed by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control since September 11, 2001. It is worth noting this list of twenty-five, for it offers an authoritative guide to U.S. Islamist groups which, in the senators' words, "finance terrorism and perpetuate violence" (I have rearranged their order to make it alphabetical):
International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) or Internal Relief Organization
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So we see Khaled aligned with the International Relief Association as early as 1998. Tony declared on SI being an agent of MTHO, also at a time when Yugoslavia was the focus of radical Islamic organizations because of the war between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. Dots, dots, dots.... |
