RIYADH, May 14: The former head of Saudi Arabia’s Al Haramain charity said on Saturday he was filing a lawsuit in the United States against senior officials, including Condoleezza Rice, for putting him on a UN terrorist blacklist. Saudi Arabia shut down Al Haramain Foundation last October, four months after Aqil al Aqil’s name was placed on the UN list of suspects linked to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, after a US request.
Washington said the charity’s international branches provided “financial, material and logistical” support to Osama bin Laden’s network, a charge Mr Aqil repeatedly denied.
“Since my opponent is the American administration, which is working on the principle of ‘guilty until proven innocent’, then the way to clear my name is through the American judiciary,” Mr Aqil said in a statement.
“... I have decided to file a case against the American government in the federal court in Washington DC.”
Alongside Ms Rice, Mr Aqil named Treasury Secretary John Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Juan Zarate, the US Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorism financing.
“I am not asking anything of the American judiciary — which is known for its independence — apart from justice,” he said.
Since the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Riyadh has tightened financial controls to stem any flow of cash to militants. US officials allege Saudi Arabia was the main source of Al Qaeda funding before 2001.
Riyadh shut down Al Haramain and said last year it was folding its assets into a new group that will channel all Saudi charitable contributions abroad.
Mr Aqil said his own bank accounts had also been frozen, despite his efforts to show that Al Haramain had “no link to terrorism, or the acts of Al Qaeda, or what happened on Sept 11”.
The organization, founded in the early 1990s, used to raise around $50 million a year, making it one of the largest Saudi charities.
It said it provided assistance and food to Muslims in East Africa, the Balkans, Chechnya and several Asian countries. It also built 1,300 mosques, sponsored 3,000 preachers and produced 20 million religious pamphlets, Al Haramain officials said.
But in March 2002 the United States listed the foundation’s offices in Bosnia and Somalia as “terrorist organizations”. Two years later it added Al Haramain’s branches in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and the Netherlands to the list. —Reuters
