New York Times

Washington Post

By JUDITH MILLER

WASHINGTON, March 20 — Federal law enforcement officials today raided 15 organizations and individuals in Northern Virginia and a chicken farm in Georgia, all of them, the authorities said, suspected by the Treasury Department of laundering money for Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

The raids were the first to be coordinated by the Treasury Department's counterterrorism task force responsible for stopping the flow of money to terrorist organizations in the United States and abroad.

The department announced the raids in a single-page press release that gave the number of targets but provided little other information about them or the nature of what the authorities sought.

People close to the Treasury investigation said, however, that among the main targets was a commercial building at 555 Grove Street in Herndon, Va., where the SAAR Foundation, a Saudi-financed charity that is now defunct, had an office until recently. No representative of the foundation could be located for comment.

The Grove Street building, about 20 miles from Washington, also houses offices of several other Islamic charities and individual Muslims who, officials said, are being investigated for the possibility of money-laundering activities.

One other place searched today was the office of the International Islamic Relief Organization at 360 South Washington Street in Falls Church, Va., another Washington suburb.

That charity has a parent, the Muslim World League, that officials said was also searched. Corporate records show that the Muslim World League, which is financed in part by the Saudi government, is based at the same address as the relief organization, in Falls Church, but that it has used the Herndon building as a mailing address.

Last October, the Treasury Department listed another Islamic charity financed by the Muslim World League, the Rabita Trust, as having connections to Al Qaeda.

Search warrants were also served today, officials said, on the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is at 500 Grove Street, across the street from the SAAR Foundation. Officials said the government had been investigating the institute for at least three years.

An employee there, Tarik Hamdi, whose home was also raided today, was mentionedin the New York trial resulting from the bombing of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. A battery for a satellite phone was carried to Afghanistan by Mr. Hamdi that year; this phone, a prosecutor at the trial said, "is the phone that bin Laden and others will use to carry out their war against the United States."

Neither Mr. Hamdi nor anyone else connected with the institute could be reached for comment today; a call placed to the lawyer for the organization late in the day was not returned. But in the past, officials of the institute have denied that any of its money supports terrorist activities.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Customs Service, one of the agencies involved in the raids, declined to comment on them. So did Frank Shults, a spokesman for the office of the United States attorney for Northern Virginia. The Treasury Department's press release said no further information about the search warrants could be disclosed.

But officials and others familiar with the inquiry said the government was collecting bank records and other financial information about several groups, including the SAAR Foundation, which, though officially dissolved in 2000, until recently maintained an office at the 555 Grove Street address.

Officials said SAAR had been financed in large part by Suleiman Abdel Aziz al-Rajhi, a Saudi banker and financier who is said to be close to the Saudi ruling family. Mr. Rajhi, among other things, is said to have an indirect financial interest in Piedmont Poultry, in Gainesville, Ga., which federal agents also raided today.

The Treasury Department said the raids had involved more than 150 agents and officers of the Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service and several other Treasury agencies. Local police departments in Virginia assisted.

The Treasury Department statement said the offices and residences that were targets of the raids had been searched, and material from them seized, without incident. It said federal investigators had begun processing the resulting evidence.

The statement also noted that no one was arrested during the raids and that affidavits filed in support of the seizures were under court seal.

Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert, focused on 555 Grove Street in his new book, "American Jihad: Terrorists Among Us." In the book, Mr. Emerson listed several charities at that address, including the SAAR Foundation and Safa Trust, which was also raided today, as organizations that had financed groups and individuals connected to terrorism.

In an interview, Mr. Emerson said he believed that the raids were aimed at helping the government collect information about how money that finances terrorism is laundered through Islamic charities in the United States. Such cases are very difficult to prove and prosecute, he said.

Officials confirmed today that the government was seeking information about possible money-laundering not just for Al Qaeda, but also for what the State Department describes as other terrorist groups.

These include the Palestinian military group Hamas, which claims responsibility for the scores of suicide bombings in Israel, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is also suspected of having raised money for its activities through humanitarian groups operating in the United States.

In 1996, Congress passed a law making it a crime to raise money for terrorist groups, even if the money is not directly used to support terrorism.

By Tom Jackman

Federal agents yesterday raided 14 sites across Northern Virginia, many with links to the Middle East, seizing boxes of documents in an ongoing investigation of the funding of terrorist groups.

No arrests were made, and none of the businesses was closed down.

Government sources said the investigation is looking at charities and other organizations that may have contributed money to international groups that sponsor terrorist activities.

Federal officials said the search warrants in Virginia and one in Georgia were issued as part of Operation Green Quest, being conducted by a counterterrorism financial task force created by the Treasury Department in October. Affidavits giving the reasons for the searches were sealed and were not provided to those who were searched.

Agents from the U.S. Customs Service, which heads Operation Green Quest, and officers from nine other federal agencies and from police departments swooped into locations in Herndon, Falls Church and Leesburg and other sites in Fairfax County about 10:30 a.m. Federal and local officials would not disclose exact locations for any of the searches.

But Customs agents were busy loading up boxes throughout the afternoon at two offices in Herndon: at the International Institute for Islamic Thought and at MarJac Investments, both on Grove Street. Shortly before 4 p.m., the investigators drove a large U-Haul truck into a parking lot near both.

Ahmed Totonji, a vice president at the institute, said he was surprised by the federal interest in his firm, a nonprofit Islamic think tank that has been in Herndon since 1981. He said no one had told him why it was being searched.

"We have no knowledge of this kind of thing going on," Totonji said, "and we will cooperate 100 percent."

The institute has branches in 12 countries in addition to its Herndon headquarters and describes itself as "an intellectual forum working from an Islamic perspective to promote and support research projects, organize intellectual and cultural meetings and publish scholarly works."

But the institute also has been linked to controversial groups in the Middle East. It has made large financial contributions to the World Islamic Studies Enterprise in Tampa. In November, the Justice Department called the Tampa group a "front organization that raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. The PIJ, designated by the Secretary of State as a terrorist organization, has claimed responsibility for several acts of terrorism."

Until the mid-1990s, the World Islamic Studies Enterprise was an academic institute affiliated with the University of South Florida. Federal agents searched its office in 1995 and eventually froze its assets.

Tax records show that the Herndon institute made contributions to the group until at least 1994.

Steven Emerson, a journalist and author of the best-selling "American Jihad," said yesterday's raids were part of a money-laundering investigation launched by the federal government since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"It is part of the ongoing problem of nonprofit humanitarian groups commingling their funds with support for terrorist groups," he said.

Federal agents yesterday also raided the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences on Miller Drive in Leesburg. Taha Al-alwani, president of the school, said authorities arrived at 10:30 a.m., confined employees to the lobby and began searching computers and financial records. They said little except that they were there to examine the school's finances.

Each employee was interviewed separately about his job, and when staff members asked to use the restroom, they were escorted by armed agents. The school, which opened in 1996, was the first in the country approved by the Pentagon to train Muslim chaplains. Nine of the military's 13 Muslim chaplains have studied there.

"I'm very upset, because after all our loyalty and service to our country, here we see ourselves in this position," Al-alwani said.

Agents also seized documents at MarJac Investments Inc., in Herndon, a consulting firm that has offices in Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Canada and Chile.

Operation Green Quest was created to identify and shut down the sources of terrorist funding by using the Treasury Department to freeze accounts, seize assets and prosecute those assisting terrorists.