[Vision2020] For You Republicans

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Associated Press -

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Ex-Lawmaker Charged in Terror Conspiracy 

By LARA JAKES JORDAN 
Associated Press Writer

http://tinyurl.com/yuqu6m
In this undated photo released by the Siljander campaign, Mark Deli
Siljander is shown. The former two term Republican congressman and delegate
to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008 as part of a
terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an
al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international
troops in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Siljander Campaign)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations
was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that
allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who
has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was
charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for
allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that
authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo.,
accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for
the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for
International Development.

Siljander, who served in the House from 1981-1987, was appointed by
President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one
year in 1987.

He could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. His attorney in
Kansas City, J.R. Hobbs, had no immediate comment.

The charges are part of a long-running case against the charity, which had
been based in Columbia, Mo., and was designated by the Treasury Department
in 2004 as a suspected fundraiser for terrorists.

In the indictment, the government alleges that IARA employed a man who had
served as a fundraising aide to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and
mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The indictment charges IARA with sending approximately $130,000 to help
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated as a global
terrorist. The money, sent to bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003
and 2004, was masked as donations to an orphanage located in buildings that
Hekmatyar owned.

Authorities described Hekmatyar as an Afghan mujahedeen leader who has
participated in and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The Justice Department said Hekmatyar "has vowed to engage in a holy war
against the United States and international troops in Afghanistan."

The charges paint "a troubling picture of an American charity organization
that engaged in transactions for the benefit of terrorists and conspired
with a former United States congressman to convert stolen federal funds into
payments for his advocacy," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein
said.

Siljander founded the Washington-area consulting group Global Strategies
Inc. after leaving the government.

The indictment says Siljander was hired by IARA in March 2004 to lobby the
Senate Finance Committee in an effort to remove the charity from the panel's
list of suspected terror fundraisers.

For his work, IARA paid Siljander with money that was part of U.S.
government funding awarded to the charity years earlier for relief work it
promised to perform in Africa, the indictment says. Under the grant
agreement, IARA was supposed to return any unused funds after the relief
project was wrapped up in 1999.

Instead, Siljander and three IARA officers agreed to cover up the money's
origins and use it on the lobbying effort, the indictment charges.

In interviews with the FBI in December 2005 and April 2007, Siljander denied
doing any lobbying work for IARA. The money, he told investigators, was
merely a donation from IARA to help him write a book about Islam and
Christianity, the indictment says.

In 2004, the FBI raided the Islamic American Relief Agency-USA group's
headquarters and the homes of people affiliated with the group nationwide.
Since then, the 20-year-old charity has been unable to raise money and its
assets have been frozen.

The charity has denied the allegations that it has financed terrorism. IARA
in Columbia has argued that it is a separate organization from the Islamic
African Relief Agency, a Sudanese group suspected of financing al-Qaida. A
federal appeals court in Washington ruled in February that there was a link
between the two groups.

In an indictment handed down in March, the charity and four of its officers
were charged with illegally transferring $1.4 million to Iraq from March
1991 to May 2003 - when Iraq was under various U.S. and U.N. sanctions.

The indictment also alleges that on 11 separate occasions the defendants
transferred funds from the United States to Iraq through Amman, Jordan, in
order to promote unlawful activity that violated Iraq sanctions.

In all, Siljander, IARA and five of its officers were charged with various
counts of theft, money laundering, aiding terrorists and conspiracy.

"By bringing this case in the middle of America, we seek to make it harder
for terrorists to do business halfway around the globe," said John Wood,
U.S. attorney in Kansas City.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If I wanted to overhear every tedious scrap of brain static rattling around
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