MUSLIM RELIEF AGENCY EYED IN TERROR LINK
Boston Globe, The (MA)
October 11, 2001, p. A7
Author:  Mac Daniel, Globe staff

For practicing Muslims, charity is a monetary act of worship. And the Global Relief Foundation makes it easy, taking most major credit cards while allowing contributors to calculate their annual donation, or zakat - 2.5 percent of a family's yearly income - through an interactive calculator on the group's Web page.

"And we hope that you will make GRF your messenger of good will," it says.

Through these requests and the millions of dollars it has generated, however, Global Relief Foundation, based in Illinois, may also be a clandestine agent of terror, according to federal investigators.

The GRF, which claims to be one of the world's largest Muslim humanitarian organizations, has been under federal scrutiny for some time. Two years ago, after the deadly bombings of two US embassies in East Africa, the group's name appeared on a federal list of 30 US charities and relief agencies with alleged ties to terrorism.

The Bush administration last month froze the assets of 27 organizations allegedly tied to Osama bin Laden and various terrorist groups. Global Relief Foundation this week is expected to be added to an updated Treasury list of US charities and relief agencies with alleged ties to terrorism, government officials said. The expected action follows investigators' matching of the group to a database of 14 million questionable transactions in the United States and overseas.

Adding to the group's mystery was the fleeing of its co founder and former director, Hazem Ragab, last year after FBI agents tried to question him about his ties to a Texas mosque that helped raise funds for GRF, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Federal prosecutors have said that the mosque - the Islamic Society of Arlington - has been linked to operatives of bin Laden and his network.

Stanley L. Cohen, a New York attorney who represents Ragab, denied any ties between his client and terrorist activities. Cohen also represents Moataz Al-Hallak, the Texas mosque's former religious leader, whom US prosecutors have investigated in connection with the African embassy bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition, Global Relief Foundation's descriptions of its worldwide activities raise some questions.

Despite the foundation's worldwide outreach, many of the world's top relief agencies have never heard of its work. Other claims made by GRF have proven false.

Moreover, the group's accountant and lawyer have both said they have not and will not account for GRF funds sent overseas.

Based in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, Ill., Global Relief Foundation was founded "exclusively for charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes," according to its mission statement.

Incorporated in January 1992, the group was formed primarily to help the refugees in Afghanistan as the Taliban began its violent push for power, GRF's attorney said

Since its founding, the group's finances have grown substantially. In 1998, the group received $1.7 million in contributions, according to IRS documents. One year later, that number jumped to $4.8 million.

Though purportedly blind to race and religion as part of its tax-exempt, not-for-profit status, foundation officials have said its foreign and domestic spending last year totaled $3.9 million, benefiting a host of nations with Muslim populations under siege and fighting back.

Albania, Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan were just some of the places to which the GRF says it has sent money.

But despite this huge outflow of cash overseas - $3.6 million last year, $3.2 million in 1999, and $1.3 million in 1998 - a GRF accountant, Zahir Kazmi, said he could not say how or where the money was spent after it left American shores.

"We were neither engaged to, nor did we verify the delivery of the program services in those countries" in the last two fiscal years, according to the accountant's statement.

Though the IRS requires a detailed listing of nonprofits' annual program accomplishments, GRF did it all in two pages and suffered no consequences, according to IRS officials.

In the foundation's 1999 tax return, for example, it summed up its largest program - $2.18 million in costs - in two sentences. "The Foundation was very active in Kosovo and Chechnya," reads the summary. "The total cost of the Foundation's program in Kosovo and Chechnya was $1,307,000."

Kazmi said tracking the foundation's money overseas is impossible for an organization trying to keep operating costs low.

"Based on my association as an outside accountant, [GRF's] support base is very wide and the perception is that they provide a very, very good service," Kazmi said. "Personally, I would be really dumbfounded that they are involved" in funding terrorism.

The group's attorney, Ashraf Nubani of Springfield, Va., said that GRF "owes it to their donors to show that the money or the aid that was sent arrived at the proper project or place where they are in."

"They do that through their newsletter," he said. "I think that they try the best that they can."

Juliette Kayyem has seen the same pattern at the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation, another large Muslim charity that has come under federal scrutiny.

Kayyem, a terrorism specialist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, said much of that foundation's money was flown overseas via couriers, making it impossible to trace.

"They were unapologetic about it," she said, adding that for legitimate and non-legitimate charities, using couriers is often the most efficient way to get money overseas to countries that lack basic infrastructure.

GRF executive director Mohamad Chehade, who previously lived in Boston and Cambridge, and former director Ragab could not be reached for comment.

For Nubani, GRF is the innocent target of a nation enraged. He denied that the group's funds go to anything but humanitarian aid and said the organization has only been in "casual" contact with federal investigators.

Nubani blamed the negative attention on GRF on "Zionist journalists" and others with anti-Muslim agendas.

But in interviews over the past week, Nubani refused to name relief agencies that could vouch for GRF's work overseas. He did not allow access to GRF's full financial records despite numerous requests.

 

Memo:  FIGHTING TERRORISM THE INVESTIGATION / CHARITY PROBE
Edition:  THIRD
Section:  National/Foreign
Page:  A7
Index Terms: FAN; TERRORISM CHARITY
Copyright © 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
Record Number:  0110110238

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