Hayward: Al-Qaeda Group Funded by Obama Admin Supported Bin Laden, Hamas, Afghan Terrorists

[bigwave]

The bombshell revelation on Wednesday that the Obama administration funded an al-Qaeda group in Sudan ten years after it was designated a foreign terrorist organization merely scratched the surface of what the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) stands accused of.

For a full account of the group that received $325,000 in U.S. taxpayer money in 2014 and 2015, we must turn to the U.S. Treasury Department documents Team Obama apparently did not bother to read.

 

The ISRA was designated a financial supporter of terrorism by the Treasury Department in October 2004, under the authority of an executive order issued by President George W. Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

 

President Bush declared a national emergency to deal with the “unusual and extraordinary threat” of terrorism, with special attention paid to the networks that funneled money to operations such as Osama bin Laden’s murderous al-Qaeda crew. Attacking terrorist financial networks was a key element of U.S. strategy after the atrocity of September 11.

 

The ISRA was part of bin Laden’s financial network, as the Treasury Department made clear ten years before the Obama administration decided to provide the group with U.S. taxpayer money:

Information available to the U.S. indicates that international offices of IARA provided direct financial support for UBL. IARA, MK and UBL commingled funds and cooperated closely in the raising and expenditure of funds. IARA engaged in a joint program with an institute controlled by UBL that was involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters.

In 2000, one of IARA’s Afghanistan leaders accompanied the Afghanistan MK leader on a fundraising trip to Sudan and other locations in the Middle East during which $5 million was raised for MK activities.

 

Information available to the U.S. shows that the overseas branches IARA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to UBL in 1999. In 1997, there was an individual who acted as a liaison between UBL and terrorist-related NGOs, distributing funds from UBL to MK, IARA and others. Later that year, IARA and MK reportedly provided financial support for a group of Arab terrorists planning to travel to Saudi Arabia to conduct unspecified operations against U.S. military personnel.

 

Additionally, information identifies a UBL lieutenant and former MK official as having been the director of IARA’s operations in Afghanistan. This individual was identified as an expert in terrorism, bomb planning and guerilla operations.

 

Information indicates an IARA leader was involved in discussions to help relocate UBL to secure safe harbor for him. Among others, these discussions included representatives for UBL and MK, along with Lajnat al-Dawa (LDI), which is listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to E.O. 13224, as well as listed by the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee. In addition, a Sudanese individual traveled to Mali and stayed with an IARA director while assessing whether Mali could serve as a safe harbor for UBL.

“UBL” is Osama bin Laden, whose first name was often spelled “Usama” in those days.

“MK” is Makhtab al-Khidamat, a precursor organization to al-Qaeda founded by bin Laden’s mentor Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who also co-founded Hamas. MK was a prime mover behind recruiting extremist fighters to help the Taliban take over Afghanistan. Azzam was killed in a mosque bombing in 1989. His death has been cited as the event that put al-Qaeda decisively in bin Laden’s hands and set the terrorist gang on the path to 9/11.

 

Hamas was another group supported by IARA, according to the Treasury Department. The group was “responsible for moving funds to the Palestinian territories for use in terrorist activities, notably serving as a conduit to Hamas in one Western European country.” IARA obtained these funds using collection boxes labeled “Allah” and “Israel,” a very lightly coded means of letting donors know their money would be used to murder Jews.

 

Shortly before IARA was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, it was linked to the Al-Aqsa Foundation in Belgium. The Al-Aqsa Foundation was designated a financial supporter of terrorism by the U.S. Treasury Department in May 2003. It was considered a “vital source of funding” for Hamas and a “critical part of Hamas’ transnational terrorist support infrastructure.”

 

The i24 report published on Wednesday mentioned that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Obama inexplicably failed to check whether IARA was listed as a banned terrorist-funding organization. The primary grantee, an evangelical charity called Word Vision, did run a cursory check and claimed to find no listing for the “Islamic Relief” agency, but the database of banned terrorism financiers does in fact list IARA under its American branch IARA-USA, which has an office in Missouri.

 

The Treasury Department noted that IARA-USA was founded in 1985 under the name “Islamic African Relief Agency, United States Affiliate” and changed its name to “Islamic American Relief Agency” in 1999.

 

Under that name, the Islamic American Relief Agency was shut down by the Treasury Department in 2004 and indicted in 2008 for transferring money collected in the United States to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

IARA-USA pled guilty to these charges in July 2016, revealing a money-laundering operation that stretched back to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and included Taliban big shot Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as described by the Associated Press:

As part of the plea, IARA admitted it secretly funneled $1.375 million in cash or merchandise to Iraq in violation of United States economic sanctions dating to 1990.

The original indictment alleged the charity sent about $130,000 to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated as a global terrorist. The money, sent to bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003 and 2004, was masked as donations to an orphanage located in buildings that Hekmatyar owned.

Authorities described Hekmatyar as an Afghan mujahedeen leader who has participated in and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

If Hekmatyar’s name sounds familiar, it is because he is the Afghan warlord and al-Qaeda ally who wrangled a pardon for all of his crimes from the government in Kabul, reinvented himself as a mainstream political figure, and now sells himself as the only man who can unite Afghanistan by legitimizing the Taliban – although his actual activities mostly consist of destabilizing the government with protest theatrics. In his terrorist salad days, he was a big fan of suicide bomb attacks on American troops and civilians. He might end up on the Afghan presidential ballot in 2019.

This was hardly a low-profile case that could have been easily overlooked by the Obama administration in 2014, because in 2012 former Republican congressman Mark Deli Siljander of Michigan was sentenced to a year in prison for lobbying to get IARA’s terrorist designation lifted, failing to register properly as a foreign agent, and lying to the FBI.

 

Siljander took a payment of $75,000 from the “charity” to lobby on its behalf, $50,000 of it drawn from unused grant money that was supposed to be returned to USAID after grants to IARA were terminated in 1999.

 

And yet, the Obama administration gave this group another $200,000 in USAID grants in 2014, and then another $125,000 in 2015 even after it was explicitly pointed out to Administration officials that the IARA was a banned financier of terrorism with a history of abusing U.S. grant money.

A few lessons can be learned from the IARA saga: terrorist support groups love to change their names and choose similar names to confuse investigators; they have a penchant for attaching themselves to more legitimate charities; they sink deep roots into Muslim communities in the West to raise money and develop “Islamophobia” defenses when they are criticized; and President Bush was absolutely correct to put a high priority on disrupting global terrorist financing. Yesterday’s terrorist is today’s Washington-funded charity case, and maybe tomorrow’s president of Afghanistan.

National SecurityAfghanistanAfricaAl Qaedabarack obamaHamasOsama Bin LadenSudanTaliban

[jg1]

Please don't investigate it and setup another investigation team and spend millions with it open ended, with no question allowed, ect, ECT if there isn't going to be any penalty at the end of it all. 

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

5 hours ago, jg1 said:

Please don't investigate it and setup another investigation team and spend millions with it open ended, with no question allowed, ect, ECT if there isn't going to be any penalty at the end of it all. 

***///

 

Oh, there's gonna be a penalty, JG1....

 

No doubt about it.

 

He & Gorged Soros will be spending eternity in hell scraping each other's butt cheese onto stale bread

and force-feeding it to each other.  

 

.

[Man_Kind]

1 hour ago, SgtFuryUSCZ said:

***///

 

Oh, there's gonna be a penalty, JG1....

 

No doubt about it.

 

He & Gorged Soros will be spending eternity in hell scraping each other's butt cheese onto stale bread

and force-feeding it to each other.  

 

.

Just get the rope and I'll kick the chair !!!

[bostonangler]

It goes back a bit further than that.....

 

Jihad in Afghanistan

Main articles: Soviet–Afghan War and Jihadism

 

CIA-funded and ISI-trained Afghan mujahideen fighters crossing the Durand Line border to fight Soviet forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government in 1985.

The origins of al-Qaeda as a network inspiring terrorism around the world and training operatives can be traced to the Soviet War in Afghanistan (December 1979 – February 1989).^[6] The US viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan mujahideen, some of whom were radical Islamic militants, on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression.

A CIA program called Operation Cyclone channeled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the Afghan Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet occupation.^[119] US government financial support for the Afghan Islamic militants was substantial. Aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan mujahideen leader and founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami radical Islamic militant faction, alone amounted "by the most conservative estimates" to $600 million. In addition to receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid, Hekmatyar was the recipient of the lion's share of Saudi aid.^[120] (Later, in the early 1990s, after the US had withdrawn support, Hekmatyar "worked closely" with bin Laden.^[121])

 

Of course there is always our buddies, the Saudis

 

Some financing for al-Qaeda in the 1990s came from the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden.^[78] Other sources of income in 2001 included the heroin trade and donations from supporters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic Gulf states.^[78] A WikiLeaks released memo from the United States Secretary of State sent in 2009 asserted that the primary source of funding of Sunni terrorist groups worldwide was Saudi Arabia.^[79]

Among the first pieces of evidence of Saudi Arabia’s conspicuous support for al-Qaeda was the so-called "Golden Chain", a list of early al-Qaeda funders seized during a 2002 raid at the premises of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) in Sarajevo by Bosnian police.^[80] The hand-written list, validated by al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl, included the names of both donors and beneficiaries.^[80][81] Osama bin-Laden’s name appeared seven times among the beneficiaries, while 20 Saudi and Gulf-based businessmen and politicians were listed among the donors.^[80] Besides Osama bin Laden, among the most notable Saudi recipients were Adel Batterjee (founder of BIF and designated as a terror financier by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2004) and Wael Hamza Julaidan (U.S.-terrorist designated in 2002 as one of al-Qaeda’s founder).^[80]

The most prominent Saudi figures among the donors included Saudi billionaire Saleh Kamel (CEO of Dallah Al-Baraka, accused of funding and supporting al-Qaeda operations), Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi (funder of SAAR Foundation, shut down within the framework of Operation Green Quest, and CEO of Al-Rajhi Bank, investigated several times by U.S. authorities for its role in financing terrorism and al-Qaeda especially), and Ahmad Turki Yamani (son of former Saudi chief of Justice and former Saudi Minister of Petroleum).^[80][82] Saleh Kamel’s case, in particular, reinforces Saudi Arabia’s role as sponsor of al-Qaeda. For years, Omar al-Bayoumi, an associate of Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two 9/11 highjackers, received a stipend from al-Baraka, the financial group kamel directed.^[80] Kamel invested for several years in a Sudanese bank that held accounts under the names of senior al-Qaeda affiliates.^[80][83] According to the Wall Street Journal, the Jidda-based al-Baraka Bank, one of the biggest subsidiaries of the financial group, was also suspected of providing banking services to al-Qaeda operatives.^[82] In general, the documents seized during the 2002 Bosnia raid pointed out that al-Qaeda widely exploited charities to channel financial and material support to its operatives across the globe.^[84] This was the case, for instance, with the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League (MWL). The former had solid ties with al-Qaeda associates worldwide, including al-Qaeda’s deputy Ayman al Zawahiri’s brother working for IIRO in Albania who had actively recruited on behalf of al-Qaeda and involved several Egyptian Islamic Jihad members in IIRO activities.^[85] The latter was openly identified by al-Qaeda’s leader as one of the three charities al-Qaeda primarily relied upon for funding sources.^[85]

 

 

 

We've been helping them since they were fighting Russia, you know before Russia became our new ally...

B/A

 

[Pitcher]

REVEALED: Obama administration gave $200,000 to Al Qaeda group and continued with payment 'even AFTER learning it was a designated terror organization'

• In March 2014 the Obama Administration approved a $200,000 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) based in Sudan with ties to Osama bin Laden
• A decade earlier, the ISRA was designated as a terror-financing organization
• The grant was part of a sum awarded to evangelical charity World Vision for humanitarian work in Sudan
• Soon afterwards the government told the charity to end transactions with ISRA
• The charity then asked the government to pay the ISRA 'monies owed for work performed'
• The Obama administration authorized a 'one-time transfer of $125,000 to ISRA' 

The Obama administration approved a $200,000 grant to a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, a conservative think tank announced this week.

Although Obama's presidency targeted Al Qaeda and brought the demise of its leader Osama bin Laden, the government still provided a grant in 2014 that provided funds to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), which is based in Sudan and affiliated with the terror group.

Not only did the government provide the grant, it also knew the ISRA was designated as a terror-financing organization a decade earlier in October 2004 for ties to bin Laden. 

The grant was exposed by the Middle East Forum as reported by the National Review. 

 

+2

In March 2014 the Obama Administration approved a $200,000 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) based in Sudan with ties to Osama bin Laden

The March 2014 grant was a part of a $723,405 sum awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to evangelical charity World Vision - with $200,000 of the funds directed to the Islamic Relief Agency in Sudan's capital Khartoum. 

 

The money was awarded to the charity 'to help provide humanitarian aid, including emergency food, water, sanitation, and hygiene services, to displaced people affected by the ongoing conflict in Sudan'.

Afterwards the USAID told World Vision to 'suspend all activities with ISRA' in November 2014 and the two organizations waited for the Office of Foreign Assets Control (USFAC) to confirm whether ISRA was on the terror list or not.

As World Vision waited for a reply, the senior director announced that the charity intended to continue working with the ISRA if the government didn't reply within a week. 

Eventually the Office of Foreign Assets Control replied and said ISRA was a sanctioned entity in February 2015.

But soon afterwords World Vision wrote to the Obama administration asking to pay ISRA 'monies owed for work performed'. 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6001403/Obama-administration-approved-200-000-grant-group-linked-Al-Qaeda.html

 

 

[Pitcher]

Mods, I posted this in the wrong forum.  My apologies