The leader of a Chicago-area Islamic charity gave money and support to Osama bin Laden and other top terrorists for years, including one reputed Al Qaeda lieutenant who tried to get nuclear weapons for the group, the FBI alleged Tuesday.
Enaam M. Arnaout, 39, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen, was arrested and charged with perjury and accused of lying under oath in a civil lawsuit about his group’s alleged financial support for bin Laden and terrorist activities.
The criminal charges follow the government’s decision in December to freeze the assets of Palos Hills-based Benevolence International Foundation in its effort to choke off terrorism funding after the World Trade Center attack. Benevolence International is also charged in the complaint.
In making the charges, federal authorities detailed a long history of alleged ties to violence and terrorism, dating from activities in Afghanistan in the late 1980s to Chechnya in 2000 and Bosnia-Herzegovina this year. During the early 1990s, bin Laden used Benevolence International “to transfer money to bank accounts” where “Al Qaeda members or associates were conducting operations,” according to an FBI affidavit. At the time, bin Laden was emerging as a critic of the U.S.
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In 1998, the FBI alleges, Arnaout and Benevolence helped bin Laden associate Mamdouh Salim travel to Bosnia-Herzegovina by sponsoring his visa and providing housing there. Salim, who is awaiting trial in New York on charges of conspiring with bin Laden to kill U.S. citizens at two embassies in East Africa in 1998, allegedly participated in efforts to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons for Al Qaeda.
A Web site used to recruit fighters and raise money for the armed Islamic struggle in Chechnya posted a link to Benevolence International in early 2000, and the group sent $685,560 to the separatist Russian republic around the same time, the FBI alleged. The group also had connections to key players in plots in the Philippines to bomb U.S. airliners and to assassinate the pope, according to the FBI.
“This complaint alleges Benevolence International Foundation was supporting violence secretly,” U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said at a news conference. Though Arnaout and the group were charged Tuesday with perjury, Fitzgerald said the investigation is continuing.
Benevolence International does not deny sending money to Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan but says all of the money was for charitable purposes.
The perjury charges stem from a federal lawsuit filed by Benevolence International in January challenging the government’s asset freeze as a violation of its constitutional rights. At issue is a sworn statement associated with the lawsuit in which Arnaout said Benevolence International “has never provided aid or support to people or organizations known to be engaged in violence, terrorist activities, or military operations of any nature.”
Matthew Piers, an attorney for the charity, said the FBI failed to find any evidence of criminal conduct relating to terrorism and turned to the perjury charge as a last resort.
“I cannot think of another instance in which the government has ever prosecuted someone for perjury because of something said in a civil proceeding,” Piers said. “It’s a new day since Sept. 11, a scary new day.” Piers called the charges “a heavy-handed cheap shot in response to our lawsuit.”
At a brief hearing Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ian Levin, federal authorities said they regard Arnaout as a flight risk and would seek to have him held without bail. The judge ordered him held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago until a detention hearing May 7.
According to the FBI, a reliable witness said Arnaout discussed plans in March to leave for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He was subsequently summoned to appear before a federal grand jury and was placed under continuous surveillance by the FBI.
Fitzgerald said Tuesday that Arnaout asked the government for permission to visit a sick relative in Saudi Arabia and the request had been denied. Piers said a hearing was scheduled for Wednesday on the government’s denial. He also said Arnaout has repeatedly cooperated with the government.
The FBI affidavit provides the first glimpse of the case against Benevolence International. When federal authorities froze the group’s assets and seized its records in December, they didn’t detail any evidence linking it to Al Qaeda.
The FBI filing relied on three former Al Qaeda insiders and other confidential sources. In addition, the agency apparently obtained a wealth of information as a result of a March raid on Benevolence International’s Bosnia offices by officials in that country.
While acknowledging that Benevolence “is believed to do some significant charity work,” the FBI portrayed the charity as a group that, from the start, “was in fact engaged in the support of various persons and groups involved in military and terrorist activity.”
Benevolence International’s founder, a wealthy Saudi businessman named Adil Abdul Galil Batargy (sometimes spelled Batterjee), aided Muslim fighters in Afghanistan in their war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and was an associate of bin Laden’s, the FBI alleged.
Arnaout was “an administrator” for bin Laden who “disbursed funds at times” on his behalf and directed convoys of trucks carrying weapons and ammunition into Afghanistan, the FBI alleged, citing unidentified sources.
In an interview with the Tribune earlier this year, Arnaout said he had seen bin Laden on the streets of Peshawar, Pakistan, in the 1980s but denied knowing him personally. Arnaout, who said he was doing relief work in Pakistan at the time, also denied any connection with terrorism.
“I want peace,” Arnaout said. “I came here to establish a life, to have a future.”
Included in the evidence seized in Bosnia were “documents establishing direct communication between Arnaout and Osama bin Laden” dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s, the FBI said. Also found, according to the FBI: photos of bin Laden in Afghanistan and pictures of Arnaout “handling rifles, a shoulder-fired rocket and an anti-aircraft gun.”
In addition, Bosnian authorities raiding Benevolence International’s local offices found three guns, military manuals on topics covering small arms and explosives and a fraudulent passport, the FBI said.
Arnaout and the charity tried to frustrate probes of terrorist financing after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI alleged. For example, after learning that intelligence agents were looking for the group’s representative in Islamabad, Pakistan, Arnaout last month allegedly told the man in a phone conversation to flee into Afghanistan without his family but “with all the money,” the FBI said.