UN Al Qaida Monitoring Group Recommended UN Listing of IIRO in December 2003

By Victor Comras

While the US Treasury Department has taken action to designate two branches of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, the executive director of the charity's Eastern Province branch in Saudi Arabia, it is far from clear whether the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee will follow suit. Without such UN listing, IIRO and its operatives will be able to continue their activities overseas, making the US designation more symbolic than effective.

The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group on which I served, recommended that the UN seriously consider listing branches of IIRO and its leadership in our "controversial" last report dated December 3, 2003. For the record I repeat below what we said then:

40. One important example of the use by Al-Qaida of charities and the difficulties in dealing with this issue touches directly on the activities of one of the largest
Islamic umbrella charities, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Most of that organization’s activities, and the activities of its associated charities, relate to religious, educational, social and humanitarian programmes. But IIRO, and some of its constituent organizations, has also been used, knowingly or unknowingly, to assist in financing Al-Qaida. While IIRO has not been presented to the Committee for possible listing, the United States has asked Saudi Arabia to look closely into the organization’s questionable
activities. They have also offered to provide investigative assistance in this regard.

41. The International Islamic Relief Organization has branch offices throughout the world, including 36 in Africa, 24 in Asia, 10 in Europe and 10 in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The bulk of its financial contributions come from private donations in Saudi Arabia. An endowment fund (Sanabil al-Khair) has been established to generate a stable income to finance its various activities. The charity also works in close association with the Muslim World League. Many prominent Middle East figures and financiers have associated themselves with this mainstream Islamic charity.

42. Evidence produced recently in a Canadian court linked IIRO funding directly to Al-Jihad, a designated entity tied closely to Al-Qaida, and responsible for the
bombing in 1998 of the American Embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. A recently published report by the United States Central Intelligence Agency also indicated that IIRO funds directly supported six Al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan prior to 11 September 2001.d After that date, Pakistan also identified and expelled some two dozen Al-Qaida supporters who had been working for the IIRO-sponsored organizations in Pakistan.

43. Allegations have surfaced in India and the Philippines that local IIRO officers and employees were directly implicated in Al-Qaida-related terrorist activities, including planned attacks against the American Consulates in Madras and Calcutta. The IIRO office in Zamboanga City, the Philippines, reportedly served during the early 1990s as the coordinating centre for secessionist Islamic activities, and as late as 1996 channelled money to the Abu Sayyaf group, another designated entity. That office was established and run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden.a More recently, IIRO, which operates in the United States as the Islamic Relief Organization, was tied to Soliman S. Biheiri and the Safa group of charities now under investigation in the United States for funding Al-Qaida-related activities.

44. The Safa investigation has also highlighted the problematic issue of the use and mingling of charitable funds with investment and business funds. In that investigation, information was uncovered indicating that funds were provided by IIRO to Sana-Bell, Inc., a United States corporation for investment and business purposes. Those funds were subsequently transferred through various channels to Al-Qaida operatives, and to an Al-Qaida financier, Yassin al-Qadi, a designated individual. A number of the charities that have been implicated in Al-Qaida funding, and that have been designated by the Committee, have also been engaged in business ventures to supplement their revenues."

The full Monitoring Group report is available here.

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