http://www.bloggernews.net/112336
Charity is <http://www.bloggernews.net/112336> as Charity Does: The Blind
Sheik Followers Who Saw No Evil
Benevolence International Foundation ("BIF") had long been of keen interest
to the FBI in connection with its investigation of the threat of biological,
chemical or radiological terrorism. One of the founders of BIF in 1987 was
Bin Laden's late brother-in-law, the late Jamal Khalifa. Cooperating witness
Jamal al-Fadl told Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI that in 1992, Bin Laden
sent him from Bin Laden's headquarters in Sudan to Zagreb, Croatia, to
gather information about the prospects of jihad in Bosnia. In Croatia, he
met with Enaam Arnaout (who the next year would become the head of the BIF
in the US), and al-Qaeda operative Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros. In 1994, when
Khalifa was arrested in northern California where he was visiting, he was
traveling with BIF President Mohammed Loay Bayazid. Bayazid reportedly was
looking to buy enriched uranium. Bayazid listed BIF's Chicago-area office as
his residence. Years earlier, Bayazid had left Kansas City to go to Pakistan
and then Afghanistan. Bayazid, a Syrian, was one of the founders of both Al
Qaeda and BIF. He was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded.
Khalifa's personal organizer had the numbers for Khalid Mohammed,
regional Al Qaeda operative Hambali, and the 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef.
Khalifa's name was also written on a bomb making manual in the possession of
one of the WTC 1993 bombers. Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri visited the area the
next month on a charity fundraising trip. Thus, authorities have long
alleged that Al Qaeda has sought to develop weapons of mass destruction -
and charities like the Benevolence International Foundation have been at the
center of such allegations for years. When the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was
arrested, he had Khalifa's business card along with $62,000 in cash in a
suitcase. One idea the Bojinka plotters had, as evidenced by draft letters
on Ramzi Yousef's laptop, was to attempt to free an imprisoned brother by
threatening a chemical or poisonous gas attack. When Al Qaeda gets what it
thinks is a good idea, they tend to stick with it.
Barbaros spoke alongside Ali Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in
the mid-1990s in exhorting young men to jihad. A Justice Department
indictment explains that Barbaros told Fadl that "al-Qaeda's goal in Bosnia
was to establish a base for operations in Europe against al-Qaeda's true
enemy, the United States." Around this time, BIF began providing food,
clothing, money and communications equipment to fighters in Bosnia. The
blind sheik's son, who would serve on the 3-member Al Qaeda WMD committee,
spoke alongside Al-Timimi in 1993 and again in 1996.
In 1996, al-Fadl, who had been involved in an earlier attempt to buy
uranium for Bin Laden along with Bayazid, defected from al-Qaeda. There are
900 pages of transcripts of conversations in videotaped teleconferences. The
FBI agents and prosecutor Fitzgerald did not realize the marshals who set up
the video teleconferences were taping.
An FBI Special Agent in an affidavit in the prosecution of the BIF
head, Arnaout, alleged that Arnaout "has a relationship with Usama Bin Laden
and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade, as evidenced
by cooperating witnesses and seized documents." He continued "various
persons involved in terrorist activists - specifically including persons
trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda - have
had contacts with BIF offices and personnel." The agent opined that Arnaout
was a trusted associate of Bin Laden and also Gubuddin Hekmatyar and once
involved with Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami organization. For a time, the BIF
head administered funds for Bin Laden but later had a personality conflict
with Al Qaeda military commander, Egyptian Mohammed Atef. Atef came to head
the plans to weaponize anthrax. A folder recovered in another BIF trash
search in December 2001 contained handwritten notations in Arabic indicating
that BIF had a field office in Zagreb, Croatia for relief operations support
of jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the prosecution of BIF head Arnaout, the agent recounted that
in an April 1999, the FBI recovered from BIF's office in Palos Hills,
Illinois, a February 1999 article in the Seattle Times concerning smallpox
as a biological terrorism weapon. The sections of the text indicating that
authorities were poorly prepared for a biological attack involving smallpox
were highlighted. Although I do not see the referenced article from February
1999, on March 15, 1999, for example, there was a news article explaining
that the idea that smallpox was a threat took hold when Ken Alibek said that
Russia had produced tons of anthrax, along with smallpox. The FBI at some
point apparently realized that if one wanted to gain access to what this
defector knew about weaponizing anthrax, one would merely have to apply to
be a graduate student down the hall from him - which is exactly what Falls
Church, VA Salafist Ali Al-Timimi did.
In 2000, Chechen military commander associated with Bin Laden's
CBRN aspirations, Ibn Khattab solicited funds on the Al Qaeda website,
qoqaz.com. Mirrored by a North Brunswick, NJ webmaster Mazen Mokhtar, the
website said that funds should be routed through one of two charities. One
of the two charities commended by the website for this purpose was BIF.
In the New York City area, BIF was represented by Saffet Abid
Catovic. Catovic was a boy scout troop leader, religious teacher, hospital
administrator, and senior Bosnian diplomat and "Minister Counsellor" at the
Bosnian Mission to United Nations in Manhattan. New York City police found
his New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation business card among the
personal effects of the blind sheik's bodyguard, El Sayyid Nosair, after
Nosair assassinated militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane. Mr. Catovic worked
as a budget director at a New York Hospital. In a videotaped religious
lecture, Catovic introduced and praised Siddig Ali (who was later convicted
of a central role in a fundamentalist conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks
in 1993). Siddig Ali spoke on the subject of "Jihad: The Forgotten Duty."
Catovic spoke alongside Mazen Mokhtar at a jihad summer camp in Pennsylvania
in 2000 in which he explained that a timeframe for the US to become a
caliphate was 2-5 years.
Yusuf Wells, who was a BIF fundraiser, visited Northern Virginia
over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa
State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a
paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after
an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members
about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells' job involved writing reports
about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:
"I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get
together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I
understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully
geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball
weaponry. They call it 'training' and are very serious about it. I knew at
least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.. Many were
confused as to why I had been 'trusted' to join the group so quickly, but
were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get
presentations on their respective localities."
After the anthrax mailings, former FBI agent Jack Cloonan and
several colleagues arrived in Khartoum, Sudan in November 2001 to interview
al-Douri and Bayazid. He was part of a joint FBI-CIA team. Cloonan has said
Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when asked about possible bin Laden ties to
Saddam Hussein's regime, saying bin Laden hated Saddam. Bin Laden viewed
Saddam as "a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate." Both al-Douri and
Bayazid lived in Tucson during the early 1990s.
On December 14, 2001, in the afternoon, three immigration agents
arrested Rabih Haddad, head of Global Relief Foundation, at his Ann Arbor
home on a minor immigration violation. The FBI made related raids of BIF
offices in connection with the search for evidence that Bin Laden was
planning further attacks in the US and developing weapons of mass
destruction such as weaponized anthrax. United States Attorney Fitzgerald's
original plan did not call for searches or "takedowns of the GRF or BIF
offices in Illinois." Instead, the 9/11 Commission found, the FBI had
intended to listen using electronic intercepts to the reaction to the
searches by the charity personnel. Their hand was forced, however, by the
reporter's call to Global Relief Foundation.
The Newark, NJ BIF office was searched in mid-December 2001 at the
same time the BIF and Global Relief Foundation offices in Illinois were
searched.
The charity investigation remained shrouded in secrecy until June
2002 when a helicopter emerged out of the clouds circling about Adham
Hassoun's car not not far from his residence in Sunrise, Florida. "They
thought I was somebody important. They thought they hit the jackpot." FBI
agents questioned him initially when it was discovered that he had been the
American representative for the publication Nida'ul Islam. "Brother Adham
Hassoun" was listed as the publication's subscription officer. Hassoun
explained "I called these people and told them, 'Take my name off there'."
Hassoun was the founder of BIF in the US, in Plantation, Florida in 1992
before it was moved to Chicago.
The government alleged that Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer,
had allegedly planned an assassination, provided material support to
terrorist groups, and was a member of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's Islamic
Group. Hassoun, a Palestinian of Sunrise, Florida born in Lebanon, allegedly
tried to recruit Egyptian Mohammed Yousseff, a friend of Padilla's. Hassoun
had ties to charitable groups with alleged links to terrorist groups. The
authorities did not want to arrest him and instead wanted to see where he
might lead them. Their hand was forced when a Miami reporter called him to
ask him about Padilla and they thought he might flee. It is suspected that
Hassoun was among those who would be assisting Zacarias Moussaoui in a
separate mission, totally separate to 9/11.
Mohammad Javed Qureshi, a Muslim from Pakistan and founder of the
School of Islamic Studies in Sunrise, was Padilla's former boss. As manager
of a Taco Bell he hired Padilla to make Tacos about the time Padilla
converted to Islam. ''With this latest arrest it leads me to believe that
there is a cell or organization recruiting Muslims for terrorist
activities,'' Javed told a local newspaper upon news of Padilla's detention.
''We need to look into Egypt and see where he went,'' he told New York
Times, "and then put the two and two together. Are there recruiters here?
Yes. Have I met them? No. But .. the recruiters are out there. I'm trying to
find them myself.''
The FBI investigation of Mr. Hassoun began after the arrest of
supporters of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman in Brooklyn revealed the
existence of a network in North American supporting Islamic fighters
worldwide. Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami
case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over
more than a decade. No one was arrested until June 2002 and no charges were
brought until October 2004. Phone calls related to financial support of
individuals willing to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and
Somalia. A November 2005 indictment details numerous checks payable to
Global Relief Foundation to fund "tourists" from 1998 - 2001.
An associate of Jayyousi, Hassoun helped distribute the Islam Report
in South Florida and looking for young recruits willing to become mujahidin
to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes, according to the FBI.
According to court papers, Hassoun had been under FBI investigation since a
January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and the blind sheik. Like
Hassoun, Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a
strong supporter of Abdel- Rahman. Jayyousi frequently spoke with the jailed
sheik by telephone in 1994 and 1995. Shortly after Rahman's arrest, Jayyousi
(aka Abu Mohammed) founded the American Islamic Group, which published the
Islam Report. The newsletter carried news about the sheik and recounted the
exploits of jihadists around the world.
Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt
during the probe, also used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim
extremists through nonprofit organizations to include Save Bosnia Now, later
renamed to American Worldwide Relief. Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents
eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but was not charged
until April 2005. He was released on bail - the only defendant in the Miami
case to win pretrial release. Jayyousi was dismissed from his job as
Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools in the Spring of 2001.
Co-defendant Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman, lived
in Le Duc, Canada and helped distribute Jayyousi's Islam Report in Canada.
According to the FBI, Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and is still
there, having been detained in 2000. According to the Canadian Security and
Intelligence Service, Daher had contact with Vanguards of Conquest member
Jaballah and involvement with EIJ activities. After 9/11, an article in the
Arabic newspaper Sharq al Awsat reported that Lebanon had received a request
from Canada through Interpol for information on eight people, including a
man described as a "partner of Daher's" - Ahmad Khadr ("al-Kanadi"). Thus,
there appears to have been a coordination between the "al-Kanadi" and
Florida networks. The "Florida cell" had connections to Jaballah and would
have been concerned over his detention to a security certificate, along with
EIJ member Mahmoud Mahjoub.
The federal government charged that Adham Hassoun recruited Padilla
into Islam and possibly into al Qaeda. Padilla started studying Islam at the
Darul Uloom Islamic Institute and the al-Iman mosque. An outspoken
Palestinian activist living in the area, Hassoun had quit his job as a
computer programmer to oversee the opening of a Muslim charity, Benevolence
International Foundation, in Plantation. Although only recently incorporated
in the U.S., the charity had existed for a couple of years in previous
incarnations - with branches in Pakistan, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the
Philippines. The group can be traced back to the wealthy Saudis who founded
its predecessor groups, two sheiks with strong ties to Osama bin Laden. The
same two sheiks underlie the views espoused by the Islamic Assembly of North
American formed in 1993. One of the two sheiks, al-Hawali, was in touch with
Al-Timimi in fall 2001 in connection with having his views heard and
understood by the US Congress.
CBS reported that "US officials describe Hassoun as an important
link not only to the Padilla investigation, but possibly to a suspected
US-based al-Qaeda network awaiting orders for future attacks. Sources said
domestic intelligence intercepts have now convinced officials that such a
network of al-Qaeda fund-raisers and operatives exist in the United States."
Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Ranking Member, Intelligence Committee)
said: "I-I fear that it's a lot more widespread than we originally thought,
and there are probably other terrorist cells that could be affiliated with
them, other groups besides al-Qaeda."
BIF Canada was founded by Mahammed Khatib, an employee of the
International Islamic Relief Organization. International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO) is a Saudi charity that Canadian agents allege was
involved in financing Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Manila office of the IIRO
was headed by Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Muslim World League and
IIRO had an office at 360 Washington, the location of Al-Timimi's Dar Arqam.
The Canadian BIF chapter shared an office in Toronto with IIRO's parent
organization, Muslim World League, and both Canadian groups were run by the
same man.
Dating back to its founding, BIF is connected to World Assembly of
Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Falls Church, Virginia, which was run by Bin Laden's
nephew. 50 FBI agents raided WAMY offices in late May 2004. The Washington
Post explained: "Sources said the raid was part of an investigation into
whether the group's operations around the world have financial and other
ties to terrorists, but the scope of the probe could not be learned because
the case is under court seal." Abdullah bin Laden incorporated WAMY's U.S.
branch in Falls Church in 1992, became president and was listed on forms
until at least 1998. A volunteer board member who had just received his
computer sciences doctorate from George Mason University was arrested on
immigration charges. He was expert and had published on computer security
protocols. The WAMY official and newly minted GMU computer security PhD left
for Saudi Arabia in July under a plea agreement.
An arrest warrant then issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia
resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had
been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past
three years.
The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda
front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He had gone to medical school in
Zagreb, graduating in 1995 apparently. He was accused in late June 2004 of
supporting an Al Qaeda operative who after 9/11 asked the doctor to support
his application to come to the United States. Dr. Faraj was listed in 2002
as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association ("JAMA") about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61-
year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear
and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The
article concluded that although her workplace had been searched for traces
of anthrax, it was unknown how Kathy Nguyen had been exposed. It is still
unknown how Kathy Nguyen was exposed to anthrax - and an association of BIF
under these circumstances is still of keen interest.
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