Another Michigan Pol Caught Funding Islamic Terrorists

Since Michigan has one of the largest concentrations of Arabs in the US, many of its politicians tend to wind up involved in...oh, let's call them questionable..enterprises with some fairly interesting people.

Today, ex-GOP congressman Mark Deli Siljander was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about being hired to lobby senators on behalf of one of those `Islamic charities' that it appears was laudering money to send to terrorist organizations.

The 42-count indictment accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for lobbying -- money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development!

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

The government accuses IARA of sending approximately $130,000 to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated 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 participated in and supported terrorist acts by Al Qaeda 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." {...}

After leaving the government, he founded the Washington-area consulting group Global Strategies Inc. and, according to the indictment, was hired by IARA in March 2004 to lobby the Senate Finance Committee to remove the charity from the panel's list of suspected terror fundraisers.

It's not clear whether Siljander ever engaged in the lobbying push, said John Wood, U.S. attorney in Kansas City. Nevertheless, 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.

In interviews with the FBI in December 2005 and April 2007, Siljander denied doing any lobbying 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 IARA's USA 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.

Let's hope the feds do a better job with this one than they did with the Holy Lanf Foundation...which is scheduled for retraial this year.