Inquiry targets Muslim charities in the Palouse

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Inquiry targets Muslim charities in the Palouse

WSU and U. of Idaho groups investigated

Friday, August 2, 2002

By SAM SKOLNIK, DAIKHA DRIDI AND PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

MOSCOW, Idaho -- The FBI is investigating charitable donations by Muslim students and organizations at the University of Idaho and at Washington State University for possible links to international terrorism, according to criminal justice sources.

The inquiry is an integral part of efforts to understand a labyrinthine financial network that the Justice Department believes funded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said these sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Moscow and Pullman area and around the nation make good-faith contributions as required by their religion to feed and clothe the needy, the sources said. However, authorities believe a tiny but dangerous minority has secreted itself within the network of Muslim charities to fund terrorism.

Leaders of Muslim student associations at WSU and Idaho, campuses that are only eight miles apart in the Palouse region of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, deny sending money to terrorist organizations.

"We have always made sure that the money we send to charity organizations goes to legitimate sources," said Irshad Altheimer, 25, the leader of WSU's Muslim Student Association. "We give money to organizations that address serious needs."

But echoing the concerns of Muslims around the country, Muslims in the Palouse say they are frustrated and afraid that what they consider legitimate charity groups could be regarded as suspect by federal authorities, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks.

They point out that The Holy Land Foundation, formerly the largest Muslim charity in the United States, had its assets frozen in December by the Bush administration because of alleged ties to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization. The charity has denied that charge.

"It was even registered as a humanitarian organization by the United Nations, and it suddenly became illegal after Sept. 11," said Belal Nasralla, a Palestinian-born WSU student who is now an American citizen.

Growing suspicion by federal authorities of Muslim charity activities has made some people wary about making donations.

"They are afraid of sending money to an organization which could suddenly be labeled by the U.S. government as supporting terrorism, and they are afraid of being held accountable for that," said Sayed Daud, a WSU pharmacy professor.

Nabil Albaloushi, the vice president of the Muslim Student Association at Idaho, said local fund raising is minimal, given both the small number of Muslims and the fact that most are non-affluent students and teachers. Muslims in Pullman estimate that they send only a few thousand dollars a year to charities.

"In Moscow, we don't have the activity that they have in Spokane and the bigger cities," said Albaloushi, who is studying for a doctorate in food engineering.

The Islamic Center of Moscow, a two-story white house that has been converted into a mosque, serves as spiritual home to the town's Muslim community of about 50; about 150 Muslims live in Pullman.

Albaloushi said he was unaware of any investigation into fund raising in his community. However, a student in Pullman said some students in Moscow had been contacted by the FBI several months ago and were uncomfortable talking with the media. The president of the University of Idaho's Muslim Student Association, Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a doctoral student from Saudi Arabia, declined several requests for comment.

Charles Mandigo, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle, said it is policy to "neither confirm nor deny whether we are conducting an ongoing investigation."

Local law enforcement officials said they knew of no investigations or declined to comment specifically.

Whitman County Sheriff Steve Tomson, a member of the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force, which coordinates terror-related investigations in Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Montana, declined to comment specifically on any investigations.

But he noted that "law enforcement for some time has been looking at the activities of terrorist-related fund raising, with links to student communities, around the country. Somewhere along the line, some money gets diverted to terrorist groups.

"We have seen plenty of threat indicators for the state of Washington that give us great concern about the threat of terror cells," Tomson said. "That applies to Idaho as well."

But he cautioned that any potential wrong-doers would be a small minority within their communities.

"The vast majority of the people who attend these mosques are totally honorable and want nothing to do with terrorism," he said.

Among those who have drawn the scrutiny of the FBI is a former University of Idaho football player, an American who converted to Islam nine years ago. The man, who now lives in the Seattle area, was between 1992 and 2000 a part of the small Muslim community in Moscow and nearby Pullman that is the focus of the FBI's interest. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is not naming him because he hasn't been charged with any crime.

This 29-year-old man said FBI agents visited him three or four times since he returned from a trip to Yemen in April. He said he went to the country to study Islamic law and learn Arabic.

"The FBI wanted to know what I was doing in Yemen, why I was there during the Sept. 11 period," he said.

He said FBI agents also wanted him to identify people tied to terrorist networks or ideologies, as well as speak about fund-raising activities.

He said he still has ties to his Muslim friends from Idaho, the majority of whom are Saudi Arabian citizens. He said he and Muslims from Idaho used to be active in a non-profit organization called Al Moultaqa.

"The goals of Al Moultaqa were mainly Islamic 'daawa' (calling people to Islam); we did not have any kind of fund-raising activity."

The organization sold books and tapes and used the money to produce more religious books and tapes.

"When Al Moultaqa organized youth summer camps, we would also collect money, mainly because most of the children who attend our summer camps came from poor families and could not afford to pay," he said.

The man said he did Web design for Al Moultaqa and attended many conferences on behalf of it but never dealt with the finance work.

Al Moultaqa was originally set up in Seattle until 1997, this man said, but was closed because of a lack of money. After 1997, Saudi students reopened it in Moscow. He said that among other tasks on behalf of Al Moultaqa, he led Muslim prayer in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1999.

He said that by the time he decided to travel to Yemen, the activities of Al Moultaqa were already slowing down. Now the activities have ceased because Moscow's students do not want to arouse suspicions.

"Saudi students are really scared of having problems," he said. "They think if they have any kind of problems with the U.S. government, they would also be in trouble when they go back to their country."

When asked about Muslim charities in Moscow, the former football player named a group called Help the Needy -- and indeed signs advertising the group are on display in the mosques in Moscow and Pullman.

The organization was established in 1993 and is headquartered in the upstate New York town of Dewitt. The group's Web site says it provides food, clothes and lodging for orphans and families as well as medicines for hospitals.

Help The Needy provides aid to people in Iraq, according to the Web site. It is also listed on the British Web site of the Victims of War Fund, which reports distributing money to people on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Ismail Diab, until recently a Palouse-area representative for the group, said in an interview that the charity helps "the most needy people on Earth, the Iraqi children," who he said have suffered greatly since the imposition of the United Nations economic embargo on the country.

Last year, he said, the group raised at least $450,000 from Muslims in the United States, and donated it to Iraq in the form of food. But the money was sent to assist suffering people, not the government.

Diab, 51, said he was not aware of any money raised for the group ending up in the hands of terrorists. "How can you put yourself in that situation, where you know it's illegal?"

Other officials with the group could not be reached for comment.

Officials at two organizations that maintain databases on non-profit groups say they could not find any Internal Revenue Service filings by Help The Needy. Because of its status as a religious-based non-profit operating abroad, however, Help The Needy is not obligated to file income and expenditure records.

As the FBI investigates student fund-raising activities in the Palouse, criminal justice sources say the Inland Northwest Terrorism Task Force is also investigating fund raising by the former president of the Spokane Islamic Center -- an hour to the north of Pullman and Moscow.

The man, a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Israeli-occupied territories, is the target of an investigation, in part because of his alleged support for the Palestinian terror group Hamas, these sources say.

Bevan Maxey, the man's attorney in Spokane, said FBI agents have raised the Hamas angle with different people connected with the inquiry. But "they're just fishing for information," he said. "I don't think it's a fair statement that he's a vocal supporter of Hamas."

Maxey said he knows nothing about the investigation into Islamic fund raising in the Palouse, and he denied that his client has sent any of the $600,000 he raised to Hamas or other groups that have been labeled as terrorists.

"It's a juicy inference, but I don't think there is any merit to it whatsoever," he said.

The man has not been arrested or charged with any crimes, though law enforcement officials confirm pertinent details of the investigation.

They also said the two investigations may be related. Said one: "You're on the right track."