US: A federal judge yesterday sentenced the head of a US-based Muslim charity to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding donors, though she dismissed prosecutors' allegations that he was a financier for al-Qaeda.
Syrian-born Enaam Arnaout, 46, had pleaded guilty on the eve of trial to defrauding donors out of as much as $400,000 that went to Muslim fighters in 1990s-era conflicts in Bosnia-Herzogovina and Chechnya, instead of widows and orphans as the charity had advertised.
"The government failed to connect the dots . . . that Mr Arnaout supported terrorist activity," US District Court Judge Suzanne Conlon said in pronouncing a sentence of 11 years, four months. Arnaout, who is destitute and whose wife and children have returned to her native Saudi Arabia, was also ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution to the UN's Commission on Refugees.
Judge Conlon said Arnaout's personal relationship with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden dated to the 1980s Afghan-Soviet conflict "when this country wasn't necessarily opposed to bin Laden". Judge Conlon credited Arnaout for helping raise and distribute roughly $20 million over the past eight or nine years to help some of the world's neediest people, but he betrayed both the charity's donors and recipients by diverting between $200,000 and $400,000 to purchase such military items as tents, boots and uniforms for Bosnian and, later, Chechen fighters. "Support of Bosnian and Chechen fighters did not constitute an act of terrorism," Judge Conlon said.
One of Arnaout's supporters, Caise Hassan, a former board member of the charity, said the judge's sentence was "by the book", but that Arnaout's prosecution was illustrative of the "rounding up of Muslims" in the US in response to the September 11th attacks. Arnaout's attorney, Mr Joseph Duffy, told the court the case was unique because of the pressures brought on by the attacks and that prosecutors had been overzealous. - (Reuters)