Debbie Schlussel: BREAKING - Feds Indict Former CAIR Michigan Chief/Current Muslim Charity Exec as Saddam Spy; But Per Usual, U.S. Attorney Murphy Allows Charity to Remain Open, Main Financier to Walk Free
For at least six years, I've been asking (including in a New York Post column) why the Justice Department--specifically the Islamo-pandering parade of U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern District of Michigan--were breaking pita with officials of LIFE for Relief and Development, including Muthanna Al-Hanooti.
Today, Al-Hanooti, a former chief of CAIR-Michigan was indicted for acting as a spy for Saddam Hussein in America. (And--shocker--he has a second wife and family in Iraq.) To me and anyone who followed the story and read a newspaper, that isn't news. In fact, the indictment is far too little, far too late. The indictment says that a trip taken by three Congressmen--liberal Democrats Jim McDermott, David Bonior, and Mike Thompson--to Iraq in 2002, was funded by Saddam Hussein, using a third party to arrange the financing, and Al-Hanooti to put the trip together. Again, not news, since I wrote about it repeatedly on this site and also in The New York Post as far back as 2003.
The "third party," not identified in the indictment, is a man I've complained about for some time--Shakir Al-Khafaji. He owns gas stations and Italian restaurants, and property all over Michigan. He was one of three Americans--and the only one not prosecuted--named by Iraqi newspapers and Saddam government documents as a participant in the oil-for-food scam billions. A company he ran out of South Africa made $70 million. And yet he is free. I regularly have seen him pumping gas into his car and tooling about town. And I've also regularly written that he financed the trip with Saddam's money.
Again, none of this is news to me. What is and continues to be news is that Shakir Al-Khafaji has gotten away with it and has been allowed to invest Saddams millions to make millions more for himself, all with impunity and under the knowing eye of the Justice Department.
It was always well known that he was Saddam Hussein's agent, and that's why far-left Democrats--and rudderless Republicans, like Hezbollah's Congressman, Joe Knollenberg--got Saddam's, er . . . Al-Khafaji's cash, as did former U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, who got $400,000 from Al-Khafaji for a pro-Saddam propaganda film.
But, again, Al-Khafaji--Saddam's Mr. Moneybags--is walking free, thanks to do-nothing pan-Islamist U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy.
I've also asked why LIFE for Relief and Development, Al-Hanooti's employer and the organization through which he took the three Congressmen to Iraq, has continued to be allowed to remain open for business and to raise money, even though it was well known to FBI agents--and to me--that LIFE was Saddam Hussein's American advertising agency, as well as a financier of Sunni Islamic terrorism against our soldiers and contractors in Iraq and elsewhere where Al-Qaeda, HAMAS, and their satellites operate.
Despite all of this information--which FBI agents have known for at least seven year--U.S. Attorneys Stephen Murphy III a/k/a "Abu Porno" and, before him, Jeffrey Collins both regularly feted the LIFE For Relief and Development crowd and their biggest promoter, "former" Islamic terrorist and eternal FBI award revokee Imad Hamad. I have pictures (posted above).
While almost two years ago, LIFE was raided by the FBI, it--the largest Islamic charity in America--was allowed to continue to operate in the neighborhood where I grew up. And U.S. Attorney Murphy--to this day--will still not do a thing to freeze LIFE's assets or shut down its operations. Its money flows freely to fund terrorist operations against some of our own boys. The indictment of Mr. Hanooti will be not much more than a papercut in terms of making a difference. One benefit will be that Mr. Al-Hanooti will be unable to bring in more anti-Semitic clerics to America for fundraisers, as he had a habit of doing. As I wrote back in 2003:
A 1996 LIFE fundraiser, arranged by Hanooti, featured speaker Sheik Abdulmunem Abu Zant, an ardent Hamas supporter, who said, "May Allah attack the Jews and those who stand with them. May Allah attack the Americans and those who stand with them." Hanooti appeared with indicted Islamic Jihad frontman Sami Al-Arian at a recent American Muslim Council lobbying seminar.
Then, there is Hanooti's partner in crime, Mohammed Alomari, who apparently also was involved in coordinating the Saddam-financed trip to Iraq, made by the three easily-played Congressional violins. Mr. Alomari, who on-line calls me by the anti-Semitic moniker "Debbie the Shyster," is and always has been Mr. Al-Hanooti's right-hand man. (Together, they founded and operated the fly-by-night operation Focus on Arab-American Issues and Reform, which shares the same address as LIFE.) (Alomari partnered with Al-Hanooti as the U.S. lobbyists for the Sunnis in Iraq. That should tell you something about the Sunnis there--still Saddam loyalists.) Yet, Mohammed Alomari walks free. He, too, was apparently an agent of Saddam and a spy for him, just as his bosom buddy, Mr. Al-Hanooti was.
It must be Mr. Alomari's great literary contributions that have saved him to date. He is the author of an article identifying all the Jews in the Bush Administration and complaining that there are too many of them. And he is the proud author of the unintendedly-comical book, "The Secrecy of Evil," which argues that the creation of America was a Zionist plot of the Zionist perpetrating Founding Fathers, and that the Washington Monument is our country's male sexual progenitor and the Oval Office is its female sex organ.
The indictment says that Saddam Hussein's government gave Al-Hanooti two million barrels of oil in exchange for his work on behalf of the Iraqi intelligence service in America, one wonders how much of a cut of that his partner Alomari and his close buddy and champion, Imad Hamad, got. A good take, I'm sure. And I bet the feds know about this but are looking the other way. Mark my word.
So, while it is mildly good news that Muthanna Al-Hanooti may face justice, that news is far too belated and far too little.
When Mohammed Alomari is indicted, LIFE For Relief and Development is shut down and its assets frozen, and Imad Hamad--who worked for Al-Hanooti and LIFE to get USAID status and federal government protection through Senator Carl Levin--is also stopped cold, then I will be happy.
Until then, this story isn't worth the paper upon which Stephen Murphy's press release is written. But its value to him is the Bush Federal Appeals Court nomination of him that he desperately wants and needs the PR to push it through.
Posted by Debbie on March 26, 2008 06:19 PM to Debbie Schlussel