WASHINGTON, March 22: Raids on Islamic organizations in the greater Washington area that began on Wednesday continued on Thursday, with two more sites searched by federal agents.
The raids are being carried out by a treasury department task force created after the Sept 11 attacks to check and stop the flow of money to Al Qaeda and other organizations deemed by the US to be terrorist. Muslim groups have protested against the raids and denied any links of the organizations searched to terrorist funding.
At a news conference held at the offices of the Council of American Islamic Relations, the groups said an Islamic think tank in Herndon, Virginia, was searched for 12 hours on Wednesday and its staff questioned. In a raid on a house, agents reportedly broke in at gunpoint and held a woman and her daughter in handcuffs.
Search warrants are said to pertain to financial records linked to Al Qaeda and other groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and concentrate on discovering evidence of international money transfers.
Raids on Thursday targetted two houses of directors of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a spokesman for the American Muslim Council told Dawn on Friday. He said the houses of almost all the institute’s directors had been searched.
One of the directors said mailing lists, directories, staff lists and financial documents had been seized. The institute, according to press reports, was listed as a major donor to the now defunct World and Islamic Studies Enterprise, based in Tampa, Florida, which was investigated in 1995 and allegedly raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
At the Muslim organizations’ press conference, victims of the raids spoke of being humiliated, and termed the treatment meted out to them as inhumane and un-American. They said the law enforcement raiding teams included agents from Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It was claimed the agents confiscated personal items from the homes and took away even family photographs, passports, driver licences, computers, and, in one case, the wedding card of a Muslim girl who got married last week.
Some participants also accused the justice department of using tactics reminiscent of the anti-communist McCarthy era witch-hunt.
The organizations urged the attorney-general to conduct an investigation into the raids. American Muslim organizations feel particularly upset because most of them had backed and openly campaigned for the Republican ticket during the 2000 presidential election and were effusive in President George Bush’s praise till Sept 11 brought Muslims into the political and law-enforcement focus and led to numerous instances of racial profiling.