Anti-Terrorism
Financing
Laws Unequally Applied
By William Fisher
21 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
A
major government watchdog organization is charging that Muslim charities
are being summarily shut down for supporting terrorist causes while
giant firms such as Halliburton are receiving the full protections of
American law for allegedly breaking U.S. government sanctions against
doing business with Iran – a country designated as a sponsor of
terrorism.
“There is unequal enforcement
of anti-terrorist financing laws,” says OMB Watch.
The organization says the
USA Patriot Act gives the government “largely unchecked power
to designate any group as a terrorist organization”. Once a charitable
organization is so designated, all of its materials and property may
be seized and its assets frozen. The charity is unable to see the government’s
evidence and thus understand the basis for the charges. Since its assets
are frozen, it lacks resources to mount a defense. And it has only limited
right of appeal to the courts. So the government can target a charity,
seize its assets, shut it down, obtain indictments against its leaders,
but then delay a trial almost indefinitely.
Thus far, OMB Watch says,
the effort has resulted in the government shutting down five charities
that support humanitarian aid in Muslim areas without disclosing any
official finding that they were aiding terrorist organizations. But
there has only been one indictment, no trials, and no convictions. “Only
one official criminal charge has been brought against a Muslim organization
for support of terrorism, and that case has not yet made it to trial.”
According to OMB Watch, dozens
of charitable groups have been investigated since 2001. The organizations
shut down were not on any government watch list before their assets
were frozen, the group adds.
The organization says the
result is that Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government
suspects of ties to terrorism. “Organizations and individuals
suspected of supporting terrorism are guilty until proven innocent,”
it says.
To support its claim that
the government is applying the law unevenly and targeting Muslim-American
groups, OMB Watch cites the government’s “velvet glove”
treatment of the Halliburton Corporation, a giant defense contractor.
Halliburton has been under
investigation by the Treasury Department – which oversees the
terror-financing campaign – and the Department of Justice since
2001 for doing business with Iran, which is listed as a sponsor of terrorism.
But, says OMB Watch, rather
than seizing and freezing assets “pending an investigation,”
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Justice
Department sent an inquiry to Halliburton requesting “information
with regard to compliance.”
Halliburton sent a written
response explaining why they felt they were in compliance with the law.
Halliburton’s defense seemed to rest on the fact that its dealings
with Iran were done through a Cayman Islands subsidiary, not its U.S.-based
entity.
Over two years later, in
January 2004, OFAC sent a follow-up letter requesting additional information,
to which Halliburton responded that March. In July of that year, the
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas sent a grand jury subpoena
requesting documents and the case was referred to the Justice Department.
On Sept. 22, 2005, the Progressive
Caucus in the House of Representatives
wrote to President George
W. Bush, asking that Halliburton be suspended from hurricane relief
contracts for a host of reasons, including “dealing with nations
that sponsor terrorism.”
The White House took no action
and Halliburton received no-bid contracts valued currently at $61.3
million, and growing, to provide clean-up, rebuilding and logistical
assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Last year, an organization
called Halliburton-Watch charged that the handling of the case against
the company raises serious legal questions: For example, “if Halliburton
were a charity would its assets have been frozen like the U.S.-based
Muslim charities; even though little is known about the evidence OFAC
relied on to freeze and seize assets of Muslim charities, it appears
there is much stronger evidence against Halliburton -- what legal distinction
is OFAC making; if U.S. charities formed Cayman Island subsidiaries
could they avoid the USA PATRIOT Act, IEEPA, and Executive Order restrictions
on dealings with groups or countries linked to terrorism?”
Halliburton has also become
the poster child for waste, fraud and abuse among U.S. contractors in
Iraq. To date, it has received more than $12 billion in contracts there,
many of them on a no-bid basis. According to Pentagon reports, the company
failed to account for 43 percent of its Middle East expenses, with $1
billion of those being considered "unreasonable" and another
nearly half-billion in the "unsupported" category, according
to Defense Department auditors.
Critics of the government
say the government’s anti-terror financing campaign is a product
of the paranoid Islamophobia that has gripped the U.S. since 9/11. They
also say is has had its desired effect: to scare Muslim-Americans into
abandoning one of the premier tenets of Islam -- giving to those in
need.
The government denies these
charges; it says it is merely trying to cut off funding to a wide variety
of so-called charitable organizations that funnel it to groups that
practice terrorist tactics. The Treasury Department cites President
Bush’s pledge to ensure “that Arab Americans and American
Muslims feel comfortable maintaining their tradition of charitable giving”.
Meanwhile, Muslim charities
report a precipitous decline in contributions. Contributions that do
arrive come increasingly in cash from anonymous givers. And donors who
happen to be Muslim are increasingly turning to the large household
names like Oxfam and Save the Children, which may conduct programs in
predominantly Muslim areas abroad.
Kay Guinane, OMB Watch’s
Director of Nonprofit Speech Rights, says, "The real tragedy behind
closure of Muslim charities is the fate of people in need of humanitarian
assistance, who are doing without because the funds have been frozen
by the U.S. and sit in the bank, benefiting no one”. She suggested,
“The U.S. government could demonstrate its good faith by releasing
these funds to other charities or aid agencies."
Leaders of the Muslim charitable
community in the U.S. have had numerous meetings with officials at the
Treasury Department, and together developed a set of “guidelines”
for charitable organizations and their donors. But these guidelines
lack any specificity regarding Muslim philanthropy and could be applied
to any charitable organization. They also provide no safe harbor from
being shut down. OMB Watch told IPS, “A group could comply 100%
and still be shut down ‘pending an investigation’."
Leaders of the Muslim philanthropic
community in New Jersey asked the Treasury Department at the start of
Ramadan in 2004 to issue a “white list” of “approved”
charities. But the request was denied. The government claimed it was
impossible to fulfill. “Our role is to prosecute violations of
criminal law,” a spokesman said, adding, “We’re not
in a position to put out lists of any kind, particularly of any organizations
that are good or bad”
But government critics also
claim that Treasury’s campaign is reminiscent of the activities
of John Ashcroft’s Justice Department in the months following
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. The government then launched its “Global War
on Terror” by rounding up thousands of “Middle Eastern-looking”
men and women, sending them to jail without charges or access to lawyers,
holding many in solitary confinement, but accusing none of them with
terror-related crimes, convicting no one, and ending up deporting some
for non-criminal immigration violations.