Islamic Care charity funded jihad
A Boston federal jury agreed the Islamic Care International charity funded jihad, bilked U.S., as its leaders lied to help militants.
As Islamic jihad killed more than 100 people worldwide this week alone, a jury found three Islamic charity leaders guilty as charged for funding jihad, ending a 33-month federal court battle.
FBI agents caught the three Islamic leaders of Care International supporting Islamic jihad fighters involved in armed conflicts worldwide.
Care founder Emadeddin Muntasser, treasurer Muhammed Mubayyid and president Samir Al-Monla also distributed a newsletter promoting jihad.
U.S. prosecutors charged them with tax code violations, lies and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Defense attorneys cried foul over the U.S. case’s focus on Care’s newsletter, accusing prosecutors of sensationalism. They were unavailable for comment.
The newsletter, “Al Hussam,” meaning “the Sword,” grew out of the Al-Kifah Refuge Center, a known supporter of “Mujahideen” fighters engaged in overseas jihad, “or violent, religiously-based military conflict,” prosecutors stated.
In 1993, media reports linked the New York office of Al-Kifah to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“At about the time of those media reports, Muntasser founded and incorporated in Massachusetts, Care International, Inc.,” prosecutors stated jointly in an indictment narrative.
Muntasser lied, casting Care as “organized exclusively for charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes,” as if for “human welfare, charitable and relief activities,” he said in the organizations articles of incorporation.
“Like Al-Kifah, (it) was engaged in activities involving the solicitation and expenditure of funds to support and promote the mujahideen and jihad,” the U.S. indictment narrative stated.
Care even located itself conveniently at the same Boston office of Al-Kifah and resumed publication of Al-Kifah’s pro-jihad newsletter, Al-Hassam.
The face-lift and renaming of Al-Kifah, and lies to cast it as purely charitable and no longer involved in jihad violence was good enough for a tax-exempt status from the IRS as if charitable.
Through the next 10 years, Care pumped $1,7 million into Islamic jihad, funding massacres and murders to strengthen Islamic claims on world dominion.
Muntasser traveled to Afghanistan in 1994 to personally view the growth of jihad terrorist training camps.
Muntasser lied to the 2003 FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, claiming Care was strictly humanitarian - denying also that he traveled to Afghanistan.
By November 2003, before Department of Homeland Security officers, Muntasser came clean on traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan and his membership with the Alkifah Refugee Center.
The federal jury indicated a false statement count against Al-Monla could not be certain, and found acquittal for that charge.
They found guilt on multiple conspiracy and fraud scheming, the remaining false statements plus obstruction, aiding and abetting charges against each defendant.
The trial process from indictment and arraignment proceedings to the final showdown in court endured motions, orders, replies, agreements, noted objections and other decisions: more than 570 trial steps in all, producing reams of documents.
The jury sat through a grueling, hard fought court-room showdown from November 14 through the holidays, deliberating from Dec. 19 to their verdict Friday, Jan. 11.
They had breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays.