By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
January 16, 2008
WASHINGTON - A former congressman and delegate to the United
Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising
ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida
and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international
troops in Afghanistan.
Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in
the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy
and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying
senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities
said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in
Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency
of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying money that turned
out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Siljander, who served in the House from 1981-1987, was appointed
by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United
Nations for one year in 1987.
He could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
His attorney in Kansas City, J.R. Hobbs, had no immediate comment.
The charges are part of a long-running case against the charity,
which had been based in Columbia, Mo., and was designated by
the Treasury Department in 2004 as a suspected fundraiser for
terrorists.
In the indictment, the government alleges that IARA employed
a man who had served as a fundraising aide to Osama bin Laden,
the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The indictment charges IARA with sending approximately $130,000
to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated
as a global terrorist. The money, sent to bank accounts in
Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003 and 2004, was masked as donations
to an orphanage located in buildings that Hekmatyar owned.
Authorities described Hekmatyar as an Afghan mujahedeen leader
who has participated in and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaida
and the Taliban. The Justice Department said Hekmatyar "has
vowed to engage in a holy war against the United States and
international troops in Afghanistan."
The charges paint "a troubling picture of an American
charity organization that engaged in transactions for the benefit
of terrorists and conspired with a former United States congressman
to convert stolen federal funds into payments for his advocacy," Assistant
Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said.
Siljander founded the Washington-area consulting group Global
Strategies Inc. after leaving the government.
The indictment says Siljander was hired by IARA in March 2004
to lobby the Senate Finance Committee in an effort to remove
the charity from the panel's list of suspected terror fundraisers.
For his work, IARA paid Siljander with money that was part
of U.S. government funding awarded to the charity years earlier
for relief work it promised to perform in Africa, the indictment
says. Under the grant agreement, IARA was supposed to return
any unused funds after the relief project was wrapped up in
1999.
Instead, Siljander and three IARA officers agreed to cover
up the money's origins and use it on the lobbying effort, the
indictment charges.
In interviews with the FBI in December 2005 and April 2007,
Siljander denied doing any lobbying work for IARA. The money,
he told investigators, was merely a donation from IARA to help
him write a book about Islam and Christianity, the indictment
says.
In 2004, the FBI raided the Islamic American Relief Agency-USA
group's headquarters and the homes of people affiliated with
the group nationwide. Since then, the 20-year-old charity has
been unable to raise money and its assets have been frozen.
The charity has denied the allegations that it has financed
terrorism. IARA in Columbia has argued that it is a separate
organization from the Islamic African Relief Agency, a Sudanese
group suspected of financing al-Qaida. A federal appeals court
in Washington ruled in February that there was a link between
the two groups.
In an indictment handed down in March, the charity and four
of its officers were charged with illegally transferring $1.4
million to Iraq from March 1991 to May 2003 when Iraq was under
various U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
The indictment also alleges that on 11 separate occasions
the defendants transferred funds from the United States to
Iraq through Amman, Jordan, in order to promote unlawful activity
that violated Iraq sanctions.
In all, Siljander, IARA and five of its officers were charged
with various counts of theft, money laundering, aiding terrorists
and conspiracy.
"By bringing this case in the middle of America, we seek
to make it harder for terrorists to do business halfway around
the globe," said John Wood, U.S. attorney in Kansas City.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. BadConcress.com has no affiliation
whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is BadCongress.com
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
|
