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| Head of Islamocharity arrested |
| 2002-04-30 |
| Enaam Arnaout, the executive director of Benevolence International Foundation, was arrested at his home in the Chicago suburb of Justice on charges of committing perjury in documents filed in support of a lawsuit to unfreeze the charity's assets. According to a 35-page affidavit filed with the complaint, Arnaout, 39, has had a relationship with indicted terror mastermind Osama bin Laden dating back to at least 1989, when he was "trusted with the care of one of bin Laden's wives in Pakistan." Yeah, the Yemeni one, with the big... Oh. Well, anyway, y'don't entrust your wives to somebody you don't know pretty well. She could end up getting stoned to death or something, and how does that look when you're an international terror mastermind? Prosecutors also allege that people connected with al Qaeda who were trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons for the terror network had contact with BIF. Among those people is a man named Mohamed Bayazid, who "made repeated efforts to get uranium for al Qaeda to develop a nuclear weapon" and carried an Illiniois driver's license with the address of BIF. Yeah, that implies there might have been a relationship. It's the sort of thing only a defense attorney could deny. BIF had its assets frozen by the Bush administration in December on the grounds that it was providing aid to terrorists. Other organizations picked up at least some of the slack, however. The affidavit, which was signed by FBI Agent Robert Walker, charged that BIF was founded by a wealthy Saudi sheik, Adil Abdul Galil Betargy, who is an associate of bin Laden, according to documents seized in Bosnia. According to the affidavit, BIF has sent 19 wire transfers totaling $685,560 to Chechen rebel training camps in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Kinda dents my parallel lines theory, I guess, though it doesn't disprove it. On the bright side, Betargy looks like he's another of the Learned Elders of Islam, maybe even one of the top level guys. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |