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Posted on 12/19/2003 7:15:31 AM PST by Sabertooth
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 29 - A prominent Islamic leader who has met with President Bush and been an aggressive defender of militant Middle East causes was charged today in connection with possible terrorist financing.
The leader, Abdurahman Alamoudi of Falls Church, Va., was detained on Sunday at Dulles International Airport in Virginia after a flight from London. Federal prosecutors said Mr. Alamoudi had been arrested for making illegal trips to Libya and for accepting money from the Libyan government.
Mr. Alamoudi, a naturalized American citizen, was born in Eritrea and moved to the United States from Yemen in 1979. He is a former executive director of the American Muslim Council and is the president of the American Muslim Foundation. Those advocacy groups are based in Alexandria, Va., and Washington.
Last year, the American Muslim Foundation was among about two dozen Muslim groups, most in northern Virginia, that were raided by customs agents looking for evidence of terrorist financing.
Mr. Alamoudi recently said he was the first person authorized by the Pentagon to nominate candidates to be Muslim chaplains. That process is now being re-evaluated because of the arrest of a Muslim chaplain, on suspicion of spying, at the American prison camp for militants and suspected terrorists in Guant·namo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Alamoudi stopped certifying chaplains several years ago.
A complaint unsealed today in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia says that Mr. Alamoudi received more than $10,000 from the Libyan mission to the United Nations and that he had made several trips to Libya without disclosing them on his passport.
The United Nations recently lifted its sanctions against Libya, imposed because it was believed to be a sponsor of terrorism. But the United States has retained its sanctions, which make it illegal for Americans not to disclose visits and any other dealings with Libya.
Federal court papers said that Mr. Alamoudi said he had sought the assistance of the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations to help him raise money because "financing the organization's work is a constant struggle."
In August 2003, the affidavit said, customs officials in Britain found $340,000 in Mr. Alamoudi's luggage. Mr. Alamoudi told the officials that he had received the money from an unknown person at a London hotel after a visit to Tripoli in which he met with a group controlled by the Libyan government, the Libyan Islamic Call Society, to seek funds.
Mr. Alamoudi told British officials that he had "had a series of meetings with White House officials" regarding access to Libyan assets frozen after the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the affidavit said.
A donation Mr. Alamoudi made to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2000 became a flash point in her campaign for the Senate against Rick A. Lazio. Mr. Alamoudi had donated $1,000 each to the campaigns of Mrs. Clinton and George W. Bush. Mr. Lazio used Mr. Alamoudi as the focus of a television advertisement, showing scenes from a rally in Washington. It showed a grainy image of Mr. Alamoudi on stage speaking to a cheering crowd in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, the militant Middle East Islamic groups.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bush eventually returned the money.
Mr. Alamoudi has said his statement should be measured against his work for the State Department in the Clinton administration, including visits to Arab countries, where he spoke about the political progress made by Muslims living in the United States.
In 2002, Mr. Alamoudi contributed the maximum $2,000 to the campaign of Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, a five-term incumbent from Georgia who received substantial financial backing from Arab-Americans. The contribution caused outrage among voters in McKinney's district, because Mr. Alamoudi was among those named in a suit filed by families who lost members in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks, Ms. McKinney suggested that President Bush had ignored warnings because a fight against terrorism would be good for businesses allied with his family.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Alamoudi said that in the first Persian Gulf war he grew concerned that Muslims fighting in the United States Armed Forces had no Muslim chaplains to serve them, and that he became involved in the effort to recruit and train some.
He expressed confidence that the 2002 raid on the American Muslim Foundation would not result in charges. He said he believed that the F.B.I. was handling the investigation responsibly.
"I can tell you that most people in the F.B.I. are doing an excellent job," Mr. Alamoudi said. "There are a few zealots over there, but by and large we have an excellent relationship with the F.B.I."
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