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The Return of IIRO and the Delisting of Yousef Nada
NOTE: My blog has been down several days due to an electrical outage where the server is hosted. Now back up and running. Thanks for your patience.

I wrote the blog below a couple of days ago, before the other (or what appears to be another in many drops concerning the Muslim Brotherhood) shoe dropped: Yousef Nada, the godfather of the international Muslim Brotherhood was taken off the United Nations Security Council sanctions list

Mark Hosenball at Newsweek, being one of the few reporters left in the business who has any idea who Nada is and why he is important,wrote a good summary of the issue, including the fact that the U.S. had to sign off on the action at some level.

Despite the sign-off at the UN, Nada remains a designated individual on the U.S. sanctions list. Who knows for how long?

Nada was a seminal figure in the international MB movement, and his Bank al Taqwa, in the Bahamas, was one of the financial centers for Hamas (and, according to U.S. public statements at the time, al Qaeda), before being shut down. He has appeared in numerous important roles trying to bridge the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Muslim world, befriending Khomeini in Iran, Saddam in Iraq (and unsuccessfully working to broker a peace deal in the Iran-Iraq war), and has identified himself as the Muslim Brotherhood's foreign minister.

There is much more, but one will have to read Hosenball, Isikoff and my older stuff about that.

So far the MB is winning every battle and rapidly recapturing the ground lost in the dark days after 9/11, when their role in radicalization and financing of radical Islam was recognized and confronted, at least briefly.

My older blog is here:


The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report has found that the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the Saudi charity whose Philippine and Indonesian offices have been designated as terrorist entities by the U.S. Treasury Department, has reopened a U.S. office, this time in Florida.

IIRO was not a run of the mill Saudi charity, but one backed strongly by the Saudi government. As described by Matthew Epstein and Evan Kohlmann in March 2003 Congressional testimony:

U.S. counterterrorism investigators have discovered a letter under the MWL/IIRO
letterhead among numerous Al-Qaida documents recovered in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The letter, dating from the late 1980s, summarized a meeting held between Al-Qaida leaders and representatives of Muslim charitable organizations in which the attendees ultimately agreed to launch "attacks" from MWL offices in Pakistan.


The two presented evidence from Canadian trials of an al Qaeda supporter where an IIRO leader confirmed the direct links between IIRO and the Saudi government, saying, "Let me tell you one thing. The Muslim World League, which is the mother of IIRO,
is a fully government funded organization. In other words, I work for the Government of
Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government."

As a result of the overwhelming evidence assembled against IIRO, the Canadian
government (among others) has classified it as "secretly fund[ing] terrorism," officially branding it a terrorist charity,
the two testified.

The 2006 Treasury designation stated that the reason for the action:

the Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) for facilitating fundraising for al Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups. Treasury additionally designated Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, the Executive Director of the Eastern Province Branch of IIRO in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

"It is particularly shameful when groups that hold themselves out as charitable or religious organizations defraud their donors and divert funds in support of violent terrorist groups," said (Stuart) Levey. "We have long been concerned about these IIRO offices; we are now taking public action to sever this link in the al Qaida network's funding chain."

According to the GMBDR, the new IIRO was registered in Hialeah, Florida, on April 28, 2009. The previous, now defunct U.S. branch was the IRO (Islamic Relief Organization). The GMBDR notes that

After appearing dormant since the 2002 raids, and its DC corporate registration revoked, the new IIRO presence in the US seems designed to preserve the organization’s ties to the Muslim World League (MWL), the IIRO’s parent organization. The registered agent for IIRO USA, is Malik Sardar Khan who listed a residential address in Miami and who also serves as IIIRO USA Secretary-Treasurer.

It is hard to imagine why an organization with recognized ties to terrorist organizations, and one whose U.S. branch was under serious investigation since the late 1990s (see Glenn R. Simpson, "US Had Data on Virginia Group in Terror Probe as Early as 1997, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 16, 2002, p. A4 for details), would be allowed to reopen, or that such a reopening would escape official notice.

Yet, as with all things associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and its legacy organizations in this country, the official attitude has been to retreat and reach out, in the face of overwhelming evidence such tactics do no good. We knew who these groups were before, and only grudgingly took action against them. We now have forgotten who they are and seem to be unwilling to take any action whatsoever.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
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