ONE of Australia's best-known Islamic colleges has been raided by police and government investigators on suspicion its three campuses have rorted the student subsidies payable for non-government schools. The Australian Islamic College's campuses at Kewdale in Perth's south and Dianella and Thornlie in the city's north were raided at 9am (ACDT) yesterday by 28 fraud squad officers and 10 investigators from the Federal Department of Education, Science and Training investigations unit.
The officers took three truck- loads of computers and documents from the college campuses and the college's headquarters in the southern Perth suburb of Booragoon. The raids followed an investigation of several months into the school's use of student subsidised funding programs by the Commercial Crime Division. The Federal Government gave the college $13.3 million in funding in 2006.
It is possible for schools and colleges to make fraudulent subsidy claims by "double counting" students, "ghosting" students or inflating rent payments. "You can do all sorts of things hypothetically (to rort the subsidy system)," Detective Inspector Arno Albrecht, from the Commercial Crime Division, said He said that as far as he was aware, the Major Fraud Squad had not been involved in a raid on a school in the state before. The Australian Islamic College has 2000 students from kindergarten through to Year 12 across its three campuses, which are staffed by 250 teachers.
The founder and current director and administrator of the college, Abdallah Magar, refused to comment on the raids. Mr Magar founded the school in 1986. "The outcome of this environment would be full academic achievement, protection from social diseases coupled with success in the Hereafter by being saved from the hellfire," he said. In November last year, it was one of 35 signatories to a letter accusing the media of hysteria and sensationalism in reports on Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali's comments likening scantily clad women to uncovered meat.
An internal investigator last year accused Australia's peak Islamic council of funding its activities with public money siphoned off from a non-profit Muslim school. The Sydney-based accounting firm Worrells was commissioned to prepare a report on the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils' finances after members raised concerns about theuse of funds within the federation. The resulting report alleged AFIC was artificially inflating rents to milk federal and state government funds from the popular Malek Fahd school in western Sydney.
AFIC charged the school $900,000 a year in rent for the 3.62ha property, up from $418,750 in 2000 and $67,500 in 1999. In March last year the property, zoned general rural, had an unimproved land value recorded by the Bankstown Council of $3 million - leading to an annual average rental return of about $240,000. AFIC also bills the school for accounting fees, cleaning costs and other charges, which provide two-thirds of AFIC's budget of more than $2 million a year.
The school receives $11 million a year from the federal Government on condition the funds are used only for educational purposes and the school only uses surplus profits for its own activities.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21145215-5005941,00.html
BIRMINGHAM, England: Wasim Raja, 25, and Imran Khan, 19, are leaning on the grills of a general store in Alum Rock, Birmingham, watching the police activity on Jackson Road opposite with interest.
"Every time they're coming into Muslim areas, blasting open their doors ... They wouldn't like it if they dragged their mum and dad out of bed in the middle of the night. They're scum," says Khan, spitting on the pavement.
Raja is more conciliatory, although, like many here, he doubts the man arrested in a dawn raid yesterday on suspicion of involvement in a terror plot was guilty of anything. "I've known him since I was little... He's not that type of person. If they've got a proper lead, then OK. But you've got to be 100 per cent. Maybe it's wrong information."
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http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=168940&Sn=WORL&IssueID=29318
Bookshop linked to Bin Laden's 'general' (UK)
01/02/2007
The Islamic bookshop raided yesterday has been at the centre of controversy for seven years. The Maktabah store has been raided three times under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It has links with several past and present terror suspects including Moazzam Begg, who was held in Guantanamo Bay, and Dhiren Barot, 34, jailed for 40 years last November for planning attacks and said to be Osama bin Laden's "UK general".
Maktabah, Arabic for library, is in Sparkhill and sells DVDs of bin Laden as well as books calling on British Muslims to rise up against the West. Titles include 21st Century CrUSAders: A War On Muslims In Iraq And Palestine and Heroes of Islam. It also published a book by Barot which was used in evidence against him when he was jailed for planning a "dirty bomb" attack on London.
In 2000 the store, then based a few hundred yards from its current location, was raided by 60 officers, who took away books, files, computers and questioned staff. It was owned by Imran Khan, a former stockbroker, and Begg. No one was charged and Begg later left to set up a school in Afghanistan. He was picked up by US officials and spent three years at Guantanamo before being released without charge in 2005.
Khan (also known as Ash or Ashraf), moved the Maktabah store to its current location sandwiched between the Bank House social club and the Elegant beauty salon. He also opened Blade Communications, a mobile phone shop, computer store and internet cafe, 200 yards away which was also raided yesterday.
In Nov 2003, both stores were raided along with an office he retained above the book store and his parents' home in Birmingham. It was revealed last year that Maktabah also commissioned Barot, a Hindu convert to Islam, to write a book about his travels to Pakistan in 1995 when he was in campaigns against Indian forces in Kashmir. The 1999 book The Army of Madinah in Kashmir formed part of the case which saw Barot jailed.
Nanji Gohil, who owns the premises from where the shop operates, yesterday confirmed that he rented it to Imran Khan for £1,000 a month. He said: "Mr Khan has run it for five years and was never any trouble. "It does have a reputation for being slightly dodgy because it is always being raided." A website linked to the shop was still selling radical books yesterday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/01/nplot201.xml