Posted on 05/18/2002 12:16:55 AM PDT by Vigilant1
The Associated Press, Fri 17 May 2002
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — The discovery of a body police believe may be that of American reporter Daniel Pearl's on property belonging to Al Rashid Trust is just the latest alleged link between the outlawed Islamic charity and terrorism.
Within days after Sept. 11, the United States accused the aid organization of funding the al-Qaida terrorist network, which is accused of orchestrating the airborne assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
After the discovery Thursday of a dismembered body in a shallow grave on Al Rashid property in the Pakistani city of Karachi, Pakistan's Police Chief Kamal Shah refused to say whether al-Qaida might be involved in the death of Pearl. The Wall Street Journal reporter was kidnapped while investigating international terrorism. ``I don't want to play my cards too soon,'' he said at a news conference Friday.
In late September, President Bush ordered a freeze on the assets of 27 people and organizations with suspected links to terrorism — including Al Rashid Trust.
Al Rashid Trust balked at the label.
``We are purely a humanitarian organization and have nothing to do with terrorism,'' Mohammed Abdullah a spokesman for Al Rashid Trust, said at the time.
But former Taliban and other humanitarian aid workers familiar with Al Rashid Trust disagreed.
At least one month before Sept. 11, the former Taliban Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Mohammed Khaksar told The Associated Press that Al Rashid Trust was getting money from al-Qaida, using it to fund the Taliban and build mosques throughout Afghanistan. He said it was also using its scores of bakeries to give free or heavily subsidized food to Taliban supporters.
``I saw them in Kandahar and I asked them 'Why are you building more mosques? We need hospitals and schools?'' Khaksar said at the time.
Al Rashid Trust first began to emerge in Afghanistan in 1999. Within four months, Kabul's landscape had changed: White signs emblazoned with the name of the Pakistani-based Al Rashid Trust had suddenly appeared on every other street.
``The money is collected from Muslims clerics all over the world,'' Atta Mohammed, a worker for the organization, said last fall — before the terrorist attacks in the United States.
In an advertisement beseeching the faithful for money, the Al Rashid Trust asked: ``When will the Islamic world wake up for Islam?''
After the first round of United Nations sanctions against the Taliban in 1999 to punish them for harboring Osama bin Laden, the religious militia quietly began to encourage Islamic charities that espoused their brand of harsh Islam.
Aid organizations and former Taliban officials charge that Al-Rashid Trust has links with other militant groups, particularly Jaish-e-Mohammed and its radical leader, Massood Azhar — one of three men freed from Indian jails in 1999 in exchange for a hijacked Indian plane and its passengers.
Another man freed from Indian jails along with Azhar was British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is the chief suspect in Pearl's kidnapping. Sheikh is accused by Pakistani police of masterminding Pearl's kidnapping.
Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Mohammed, along with four other groups in January following the deadly attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.
Al Rashid Trust publishes Jaish-e-Mohammed's inflammatory magazine, Dharb-e-Momen (Force of the True Muslim), which was considered mandatory reading by the Taliban. It was openly displayed by Taliban ministers in Kabul before their ouster last Nov. 13.
Al-Rashid Trust still publishes the magazine as well as an Urdu-language magazine simply titled Jaish-e-Mohammed.
We need to eliminate the mullah cockroach nest in Iran. If we don't do it soon, we will be sorry.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "terrorism."
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