Benevolence International Foundation, an Illinois-based Muslim charity, asks Americans to open their wallets to help Afghan orphans living near the dusty village of Koti Ashro outside Kabul.
What Benevolence does not mention, on its Web site or in its newsletters, is that these orphans attended an institution that until recently was run by a Taliban official who was also a good friend of Osama bin Laden, according to former Taliban leaders and workers at other relief groups.
This does not prove that Benevolence money ended up in the hands of bin Laden or other terrorists. But the link to the Taliban official raises concerns about the distribution of Benevolence funds.
The orphan program is just one example of the kind of activities that have cast suspicion on Benevolence and other groups working in the name of Islamic philanthropy.
Since the U.S. government froze its assets in December, citing suspected links to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, authorities have refused to say why Benevolence is being investigated.
Charity decries `anti-justice’
The charity, based in southwest suburban Palos Hills, denies any involvement with terrorism. It has challenged in federal court the government’s actions, which Benevolence officials call “anti-justice.”
Benevolence’s attorney, Matthew Piers, said the group was unaware of the link between the orphan program and bin Laden’s associate.
Benevolence is “squeaky clean,” Piers said. “I cannot find a jaywalking problem, let alone a terrorism problem, even an inadvertent one.”
Yet Benevolence’s history, from its origins in the Arab effort to aid the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s to its recent endeavors in Afghanistan, points to a number of overlaps with bin Laden and radical Islamic causes.
For example, government authorities appear to believe that Benevolence’s leader, Enaam Arnaout, was connected with a bin Laden organization called the Services Office, according to a federal document issued when Benevolence’s offices were raided nearly three months ago. The Services Office is widely viewed as the precursor to Al Qaeda.
Benevolence’s office in Saudi Arabia was shut down by Saudi officials several years ago in a reported crackdown on terrorism funding. And its former operations manager toured the United States in the mid-1990s praising the fighting skills of Muslim holy warriors.
Tracking the activities of groups like Benevolence is not easy. Like many Islamic charities, Benevolence focuses on helping Muslims in far-flung war zones, where humanitarian relief is sorely needed.
But some charities also have been used to provide cover and funding for Al Qaeda, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism researcher based in Scotland.
In a recent interview in his lawyer’s Chicago offices, Arnaout, a 39-year-old native of Syria who is now a U.S. citizen, denied any connection to terrorism.
Benevolence is devoted to “looking after suffering people all over the world, especially widows, orphans and refugees,” he said.
The charity, which collected $3.6 million last year and has 10 overseas offices, says it builds wells in Pakistan, delivers shoes to Chechen refugees and funds Islamic summer camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Azerbaijan.
“Always we are in the field,” Arnaout said. “We check on the office ourselves. We don’t send the money and forget about it.”
Yet control appeared lax in Koti Ashro, a hamlet on the outskirts of the town of Maidan Shahar. BIF distributes aid to about 100 orphans in Koti Ashro, more than a quarter of the total number of children it sponsors in Afghanistan.
Benevolence has been sending money to Koti Ashro since 1999. But nobody from the U.S. headquarters has ever visited the orphanage. No U.S. representative of the group has been to Afghanistan since around 1996, Arnaout said.
Instead, Benevolence has relied on its Pakistan-based project manager, an Afghan native named Haroon, to oversee the program. Like many Afghans, Haroon uses only one name.
Haroon said he picked the location on the recommendation of Hafeezullah, the Taliban’s chief of protocol at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Hafeezullah was originally from the Koti Ashro area and served as director of the institution. The institution now mainly offers classes in Koranic study to local children, including orphans.
Hafeezullah was also, according to those who knew him, a close friend of bin Laden. Unlike most Afghans, he spoke fluent Arabic and was well-connected in Al Qaeda circles, said Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar, the Taliban’s former deputy interior minister. At Khaqzar’s one meeting with bin Laden, he recalled, Hafeezullah served as bin Laden’s interpreter.
Hafeezullah “was not a powerful man in the Taliban, but he had good relations with Osama bin Laden and that is why he was powerful,” Khaqzar said.
When bin Laden visited Kabul for the first time in 1996, he and his family stayed at Hafeezullah’s home and Hafeezullah was a regular visitor to bin Laden’s home in Jalalabad, according to Khaqzar. Journalist Peter Bergen, author of “Holy War, Inc.,” said that of all the Taliban officials he interviewed in 1999, Hafeezullah took the “hardest line” against expelling bin Laden from the country.
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Hafeezullah, who had a reputation as one of the more corrupt Taliban officials, fled Kabul along with the rest of the Taliban leadership in November. His whereabouts are unknown.
UN helped orphanage
Haroon insists he did not know that Hafeezullah was friends with bin Laden. Piers, Benevolence’s attorney, said the group would not have funded the orphanage if it had known about the connection. Piers pointed out that the United Nation’s World Food Program has donated food to the orphanage.
Whether the orphans got all the money sent by Benevolence donors remains a mystery. The amounts Benevolence claims it sent do not tally with the sums the orphans and their principal say they received.
Benevolence said it began donating $22.50 a month to each orphan beginning in December 1999; the amount rose to $27 in May 2001. Paid in Pakistani rupees, the subsidies would have totaled about $518 an orphan by last September.
Benevolence made available records showing the children’s names and the amounts distributed, with a fingerprint next to each name.
But the principal of the orphanage, Malim Mohammed, and several children said Haroon actually distributed much less than the records showed. According to Mohammed, Haroon gave only about $163 a child during the entire period.
Most Western charities file reports on their activities with the Ministry of Planning in Kabul, but Benevolence has never reported on any of its projects, according to a ministry official.
Roots of connection
Benevolence’s and Arnaout’s connections to Afghanistan date back to the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, when thousands of Arabs, including bin Laden, flocked to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar to join the mujahedeen, or holy warriors. In those days the United States supported the Arab and Afghan fighters, including bin Laden, in their fight against the Soviet occupation and the communist regime in Kabul.
Arnaout, then doing graduate work in Islamic studies in Lahore, Pakistan, said he went to Peshawar in 1987 and worked for a Saudi charity called Muslim World League. Muslim World League has also come under U.S. government scrutiny: Shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Treasury Department put a Pakistani affiliate of the group on a list of agencies believed to be supporting terrorism.
Arnaout said that in 1988 he went from Muslim World League to work for Benevolence’s founder, a Saudi businessman named Adel Abdul Jaleel Batterjee. Batterjee oversaw a relief operation called Lajnat al Birr al Islamiyya, which was funded by the Saudi government.
Arnaout said he saw bin Laden in Peshawar but did not know him personally.
But federal officials seem to have linked him to bin Laden’s Services Office (Makhtab al Khidamat in Arabic), which was set up to facilitate the recruitment, travel and training of Arabs arriving to fight as mujahedeen. The U.S. government froze assets tied to the Services Office shortly after Sept. 11, alleging that it provided financial and logistical support to Al Qaeda.
In the Dec. 14 raid on Benevolence’s office, federal officials showed a search document indicating that Arnaout was an alias for Samir Abdul Motaleb, Piers said. A man of that name was identified last summer by Jane’s Intelligence Review, a respected military journal, as having been one of the leaders of the Services Office.
Piers insists that Arnaout never used the name Samir Abdul Motaleb and was not connected with the Services Office. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Washington declined to comment on the alleged alias.
In 1991 Batterjee’s organization published a book about the so-called Afghan Arabs who fought in Afghanistan, lavishing praise on bin Laden, according to Middle Eastern terrorism expert Steven Emerson. The Arabic-language book, which Emerson said he obtained from Batterjee, contains a detailed account of bin Laden’s organization in Afghanistan, including a description of one of the first military training camps he established there. The book is available at a University of Chicago library.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Batterjee incorporated Benevolence in Chicago in 1992, seeking to raise money from American Muslims. Its headquarters were in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and it had operations in Sudan, Bangladesh and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Batterjee recruited Arnaout to oversee the Bosnian project.
In May 1993, Saudi authorities refused to give Batterjee a license to operate Benevolence, Arnaout said. The action coincided with a Saudi crackdown on charities believed to be funding terrorist movements. Batterjee, described as a “known political activist,” was detained by police, according to a report at the time in the London newspaper the Guardian. Saudi officials declined to comment.
After Batterjee’s clash with Saudi authorities, Arnaout took over Benevolence. Arnaout, who said he does not believe Batterjee supported extremist causes, said Batterjee has remained a benefactor, donating a total of about $150,000.
Link to bin Laden bank
Batterjee is now chairman of Al Shamal Islamic Bank in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, according to the bank’s Web site. Al Shamal has been identified by the U.S. State Department as being founded and capitalized by bin Laden, an allegation that the bank has denied. Batterjee did not respond to requests for comment.
Political messages have also crept into Benevolence’s philanthropy, including a newsletter that even Benevolent officials later conceded was strident.
Suleman Ahmer, who was the group’s operations manager, a board member and its main fundraiser in the mid- to late-1990s, delivered a speech across the U.S. entitled, “Jihad–The Misunderstood Word.”
Most of the speech focused on the exploits of Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.
“OK, fine, we have some shortcomings, but we Muslims know how to fight wars,” Ahmer said in the speech.
Ahmer also lauded the Taliban in a panel discussion two years ago at Northwestern University, offending audience members with his defense of the regime’s treatment of women, said Noreen Khalid, a student who helped organize the event.
Arnaout said Ahmer resigned from Benevolence in late 1999 and had already left when he appeared at Northwestern. Ahmer, who has returned to his native Pakistan, said in an e-mail message that he has never supported terrorist acts in the name of Islam.