IIRO Freezing Long Overdue

By Douglas Farah

The Treasury Department's decision to designate two branches of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is long overdue and overlooks a much broader problem. While the Philippine and Indonesian branches have been particularly troublesome for many years, the entire organization has been alleged to have been involved in terrorist activities on a far broader level.

IIRO is a sister organization of the Muslim World League (MWL), one of the principal Islamist groups operating in the United States. The IIRO, using the name IRO for the U.S. branch, was also part of the Safa Group, the cluster of Islamist charities raided in Herndon, Virginia in March 2002 on supsicion of funding terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

According to an affidavit filed Aug. 14, 2003, by Special Agent David Kane, the IIRO branch in the United States received $10 million from IIRO in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The money was to be invested by a company called Sana-Bell Inc. The proceeds were to go to fund the IRO's U.S. activities.

"I have found evidence corroborating that IIRO/IRO has transferred funds to HAMAS through HAMAS fronts such as Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (“HLF”)," Kane testified. While the case against the group is going slowly, due to the complexity of the schemes used by the defendants to make tracing their money as difficult as possible, it is moving forward slowly.

But more ominous is a 1996 CIA report on Islamic charities that shows that 10 years ago the intelligence community had at least a working knowledge of some of the more radical Islamist groups. My entire blog is here.

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