At Pajamas, Patrick Poole, who broke the story that the Obama Justice Department quashed an effort by the U.S. attorney in Dallas to indict a top CAIR official, has now reported that political appointees in the Obama Justice Department also killed an effort by the U.S. attorney in Alexandria to indict senior leaders of other Islamist groups with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Congressional sources, who were apparently spurred to investigate by Poole’s reporting about the dropping of the CAIR case, have reportedly told Poole that another case
scuttled by Assistant Attorney General David Kris (who wrote the memo declining to prosecute Omar Ahmad in the Holy Land Foundation case) was a tax evasion and money laundering prosecution prepared by the U.S. attorney’s office in the eastern district of Virginia. The targets of these indictments would have been several Muslim leaders of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the now-defunct SAAR Foundation/SAFA Group, who were investigated and raided for a wide range of activities to support foreign terrorist organizations.
That case was part of an investigation that targeted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian, who was charged with contempt by the federal judge in the IIIT/SAAR case for refusing to testify about how the groups had financially and materially supported Al-Arian’s PIJ front based in Tampa, Florida, despite his plea agreement requiring him to do so. Because of Al-Arian’s lack of cooperation in the IIIT/SAAR case, federal prosecutors were only prepared to indict the IIIT/SAAR leaders on money laundering and tax evasion charges.
Congressional investigators who spoke to me also say that one of the Muslim leaders targeted by these indictments was Jamal Barzinji, a longtime IIIT official and former national president of the Muslim Student Association (whose terror ties I reported on here at PJM last August).
At the time of the raids on IIIT and SAAR back in 2003, U.S. Customs Service Special Agent David Kane testified in an affidavit requesting the search warrants, filed in federal court, that Barzinji “is not only closely associated with PIJ (as evidenced by ties to Al-Arian, including documents seized in Tampa in 1995 reflecting direct correspondence between Barzinji and Al-Arian), but also with HAMAS.”
In 2008, Barzinji donated $1,000 to the Barack Obama presidential campaign. In the 2009-2010 cycle, he donated to three Democrats: Rep. Jim Moran (VA); Rep. Keith Ellison (MN), the first Muslim congressman; and Sen. Jim Webb (VA). In 2002, Moran returned $10,000 in campaign contributions from officials associated with IIIT and SAAR….