On Al-Haramain and Government Wiretapping

24 March, 2006. 531 words.

(Today’s been very dull, if you hadn’t noticed.)

If georgia10 wrote more articles like this, I wouldn’t have indicted her as a PunDip/Entertaindit: Safeguarding The Smoking Gun? This is an article of substance with some intellectual value, about that whole illegal wiretapping program.

georgia10 says that there are some classified government documents related to illegal wiretapping being held by a Portland, Oregon court, in the case of an Islamic charity suing the government for illegal wiretapping. She believes these unredacted documents, released by the government accidentally, contain some explosive evidence that will blow the lid off this administration’s crimes. (Sigh.)

Here’s what I find interesting about all this. The government allegedly wiretapped this Islamic charity because they thought it was funneling money to a terrorist organization, but charges were eventually dropped. The charity is now suing the government because it was illegally wiretapped. My question is, why? What are they hoping to gain (besides embarrassing the U.S. government)? georgia10 does not answer this question, so I had to go looking on my own.

I found information about the case at OrCon Law, including a PDF copy of the actual complaint. The plaintiffs are suing for $1,000,000 (each — there’s 3 of them) in punative damages, and $100/$1000 per day (each) that they were out of operation, per some FISA rule. They also want all the evidence that was obtained through the wiretapping handed over. Seems a bit greedy to me, but hey, this is America. It could have been a lot worse.

Since, as alleged in the complaint, “plaintiff Al-Haramain Oregon has been irreparably damaged insofar as its assets have been frozen, preventing it from engaging in the charitable and humanitarian efforts for which it was organized,” I wondered what charitable and humanitarian efforts were being conducted by this Al-Haramain charity. What exactly have they been prevented from doing? So off to Wikipedia we go: Al-Haramain Foundation. We don’t find any specifics about their charity work, but we do find that they’ve been on a United Nations-designated suspected terrorist organization list since 9 Jan 2004.

So next we turn to Google. Searching reveals the following tidbits:

Al Haramain Islamic Foundation Welcomes Retraction; Washington Times Apologizes for Inaccuracy - 26 Nov 2003.

Friends can’t believe Ashland man would finance terrorism - 19 Feb 2004. This is an article about a secretary at the Al-Haramain charity, who is not one of the plaintiffs.

U.S.-Based Branch of Al Haramain Foundation Linked to Terror - 9 Sep 2004. Government press release about Al-Haramain charity.

U.S. Indicts Oregon Charity Linked to Saudis - 19 Feb 2005. Government indictment of the Al-Haramain charity.

Charges tossed against Oregon Islamic Charity - 10 Sep 2005. The government dropped the indictment charges essentially because the Al-Haramain organization no longer exists except as an empty shell.

Still can’t find much about the “humanitarian efforts” of this charity, which is kind of strange. You’d think they’d want to advertise that sort of thing. Anyway, I find the whole Al-Haramain thing to be a bit suspicious. If they really are affiliated with al-Qaeda, wouldn’t it be ironic if they pulled off winning a $3,000,000 paycheck from the very government they were fighting against?

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