Muslim Groups' IRS Files Sought

[Gimel]

By Dan Eggen and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 14, 2004; Page A01

The Senate Finance Committee has asked the Internal Revenue Service to turn over confidential tax and financial records, including donor lists, on dozens of Muslim charities and foundations as part of a widening congressional investigation into alleged ties between tax-exempt organizations and terrorist groups, according to documents and officials.


The request marks a rare and unusually broad use of the Finance Committee's power to obtain private financial records held by the government. It raises the possibility that contributions to charities such as the Holy Land Foundation or the activities of such groups as the Muslim Student Association could be subjected to Senate scrutiny.

An IRS official said the agency expects to comply with the request because the committee clearly has the statutory authority to examine such records. The request includes leadership lists, financial records, applications for tax-exempt status, audit materials and the results of criminal investigations.

The Senate-led probe follows more than two years of investigations by the FBI, the Treasury Department and other federal agencies into the activities of Islamic charities suspected of having ties to al Qaeda; the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas; and other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. The United States has frozen more than $136 million in assets allegedly linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups and has effectively shut down the operations of the largest U.S.-based Islamic charities.
<clip>
Committee staffers said the investigation is based not on ethnicity or religious affiliation but rather on concerns that the groups may have ties to terrorists or their supporters. "This is not a fishing expedition targeting Muslims," one Senate aide said. "All the groups we're looking at are suspected of having some connections to terrorism or of doing propaganda for terrorists. We're not presuming anybody's guilty."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14205-2004Jan13.html


Interesting. Now we're getting down to individual donors to these terrorist groups. That should raise a few hackles.

[bobbieinok]

1. anyone ever check donor lists for televangelists, CBN, TBN, etc

to see if any militia members are on them?

Did MacVeigh donate to a church? What denomination?

etc......etc......etc

[Gimel]

2. Seems more important

Rather you would first have to consider what, if any, televangelists, CBN, etc contributed to McVeigh. If there was a funding question to terrorist activity, that is. If McVeigh donated to a church or any charity that was legitimate, that wouldn't criminalize that institution, would it? Only if they participated in terrorist activities or supported his actions, supported him, allowed him to carry out his plans to blow up a community center.

[vierundzwanzig]

3. Of course they will turn up something

It is almost impossible to contribute to an NGO in Gaza or West Bank that somewhere, somehow knows someone whose brother is in the resistance.

What is more important is to know whether this is the primary business they engage in.

It is ridculous. If they want they can shut 3/4th of them down which is exactly their intention. And cut off tens of thousands of Palestinians from humanitarian aid. Another attempt at suffocating them, this time from a different angle.

Intimidation and chicanery, the tools of the trade.

[Resistance]

4. and on top of it

they can gleefully publish big headlines saying "Palestinians turn down aid due to ties with terrorist groups that they are all such a big part of!"

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.