- The target of an anti-terrorist raid in the United States
last week provided funds for an Islamic group with close ties to the
Republican
party and the White House.
-
- The Safa trust, a Saudi-backed charity, has provided
funds for a political group called the Islamic Institute, which was set
up to mobilise support for the Republican party. It shares an office in
Washington with the Republican activist Grover Norquist.
-
- The institute, founded in 1999 to win influence in the
Republican party, has helped to arrange meetings between senior Bush
officials
and Islamic leaders, according to the report in Newsweek magazine. Its
s chairman, Khaled Saffuri, and Mr Norquist cooperated to arrange the
meetings.
-
- The trust gave $20,000 (£14,000) to the institute,
which also received $20,000 from a board member of the Success Foundation,
according to the report. The institute has also received money from abroad,
including$200,000 from Qatar and $55,000 from Kuwait. The institute says
that none of the money came with strings attached.
-
- Mr Norquist, who is a member of the institute's board,
said that it existed "to promote democracy and free markets. Any
effort
to imply guilt by association is incompetent McCarthyism".
-
- It is understood that a series of raids last week were
prompted by the transfer of funds from the Safa trust and other groups
to accounts based in the Isle of Man. They have not led to any
charges.
-
- Islamic groups have complained that many of the raids
being carried out on Islamic organisations are speculative and violate
their civil liberties.
-
- In another development, the possibility that one of the
September 11 hijackers had been exposed to anthrax has been explored by
the FBI.
-
- A Florida doctor who treated Ahmed Ibrahim al-Haznawi
for a leg wound last summer concluded that the likeliest cause of the
injury
was cutaneous anthrax. But the FBI said yesterday that it had found no
evidence of a link between the hijackers and anthrax.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk
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