Former director of Islamic charity pleads guilty
Mark Morris
June 25, 2010 4:52 PM
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The former director of a Missouri Islamic charity admitted in federal court Friday that he sent more than $1 million to Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Mubarak Hamed, 53, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy and a tax violation for misusing the charity's tax exempt status and lying to the Internal Revenue Service.
Hamed served as executive director of the now-defunct Islamic American Relief Agency-USA from 1991 until October 2004, when federal agents raided the charity's Columbia, Mo., offices and carted off truckloads of documents and computers.
The same day, the U.S. Treasury Department froze the charity's assets and said it was part of a global network of similarly named charities that supported terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban and Hamas.
U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips said in a written statement that the guilty plea represented a landmark moment in the nine-year criminal probe of the charity.
''Hamed compromised national security by secretly funneling more than a million dollars to Iraq,'' she said.
President George H.W. Bush signed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which included the sanctions, in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Iraq sanctions remained in effect until 2003 and prohibited the unauthorized transfer of money to Iraq.
The charity never received authorization to make such transfers, according to court records.
''Your honor, I was wrong,'' Hamed said from the witness stand. ''I take responsibility and plead guilty.''
Hamed is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sudan.
In pleading guilty, Hamed also admitted to a long string of facts in his plea agreement, many of which he and others had spent years denying. After contending that his charity was an entirely independent organization, he acknowledged Friday that it was part of an international organization headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, that also used the initials IARA.
The African charity, according to federal officials, had frequent contact with the worst players in international terrorism.
Hamed also acknowledged that in 2001 he instructed an IARA spokesman to lie during a television interview, saying that a man who had purchased the satellite phone that al-Qaida used in the East Africa embassy bombings never had been employed by the Missouri charity.
In his plea agreement, Hamed acknowledged that he had personally hired the man to work in Columbia.
After a prosecutor read the factual recitation, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey asked Hamed if the facts were true. Hamed hesitated for a moment and noted that he had not actually drafted the statement.
''I accept them,'' Hamed said.
''Well, they're either true or not true,'' Laughrey pressed.
''They're true,'' he replied softly.
Hamed is the third defendant to plead guilty in the case. In December, charity fundraiser Ahmad Mustafa pleaded guilty to arranging for the transfer of money from the U.S. to family members in his native Iraq.
Al Mohamed Begegni, a board member and the charity's treasurer, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to violate Iraq sanctions.
Two remaining defendants are scheduled to begin what is expected to be a lengthy trial on July 6: Abdel Azim El-Siddig, the charity's vice president for international operations, and former U.S. congressman Mark Deli Siljander.
Siljander is accused of taking $75,000 from IARA to help the charity have its name removed from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of organizations that allegedly supported terrorism. Prosecutors contend that money had been stolen from a U.S. Agency for International Development grant that IARA was supposed to have used for relief projects in Mali, Africa.
Siljander has said the money from IARA was to have helped support his work on his book, ''Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.''
In his plea agreement, however, Hamed said that contention was ''utterly false.''
''Hamed never discussed with Siljander the writing of a book, and would not have spent $75,000 of IARA's funds for such a purpose,'' according to the statement.
Siljander served as a Republican member of Congress from 1981 to 1987 and later opened a Washington public relations firm. Lance Sandage, a lawyer representing Siljander, declined to comment on Hamed's plea agreement.
Whether Hamed will cooperate with prosecutors was not made clear at the hearing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Gonzalez said Hamed might offer ''some assistance'' to the government in ''further proceedings.''
The plea document also noted that a ''supplement agreement'' might be presented to the judge in secret.
Hamed faces up to 18 years in prison when sentenced later.
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(c) 2010, The Kansas City Star.
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=NATIONAL&ID=565884399901868342I'm sure he was just another in a long line of moderate misunderstanders of the book of Moohammed.
