He met a leading jihadist in Afghanistan, and then lied about it. The Justice Department said he “abused the tax system to send money to organizations that have since been branded by the government as terrorists.” There is a lot of talk here about whether or not the jihadists in question were considered terrorists at the time of his trip. If the U.S. government had the fortitude and realism to talk about “jihad” rather than “terrorism,” this problem would never arise.
“Muntasser gets jail for lying to FBI: Muslim charity founder sentenced in U.S. court,” by Lee Hammel for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, July 18 (thanks to Tom Syseskey):
WORCESTER”” The founder of a Muslim charity was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court to a year in prison and fined $10,000 for lying to an FBI agent when he denied traveling to Afghanistan in 1994-1995.
In sentencing Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, former president of Care International Inc., a defunct Boston charity, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV doubled the maximum amount of prison time and the fine called for under the federal advisory sentencing guidelines. Mr. Muntasser, 43, is a former Worcester resident and Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduate living in Braintree. He must report for his prison sentence within four weeks.
The U.S. attorney”s office called for a five-year prison term, saying the case is being watched around the world to see how the United States will treat someone the Justice Department said abused the tax system to send money to organizations that have since been branded by the government as terrorists. But Mr. Muntasser’s lawyers pointed out that guidelines called for a sentence of between zero and 6 months and that the U.S. Probation Department recommended a sentence within that range on a simple false statement case.
Mr. Muntasser was detained Jan. 11, the day a federal jury convicted him in Boston on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and scheming to conceal material facts as well as lying to a federal agent. But expectations that Mr. Muntasser might be freed on a sentence of time served were raised after Judge Saylor reversed the jury verdict on the two most serious charges and freed Mr. Muntasser June 13 on conditions to await sentencing yesterday.
Judge Saylor also reversed all of the convictions against Samir Al-Monla of Brookline, another Care former president, but left all except one of the convictions intact against a third defendant in the case, Muhamed Mubayyid of Shrewsbury, a former treasurer of Care International. Mr. Mubayyid is scheduled to be sentenced today.
All of them had been charged with conspiring to get or keep tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service by concealing Care’s support for Islamic Holy War and those who fight it and that it was an outgrowth or successor to Al-Kifah Refugee Center, which had been tied in news accounts to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
Judge Saylor called this conviction “a serious offense, not a garden variety” false statement. He said the FBI might have gained some useful information about the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom Mr. Muntasser met with in Afghanistan, as well as whether the government of Pakistan helped him gain passage through the dangerous frontier bordering Afghanistan….
Judge Saylor said Mr. Muntasser showed many charitable and other worthy attributes. The judge said he was having trouble reconciling that with the views showing support of suicide bombings and other violence in the newsletter, Al Hussam, published by Care.
That’s because he knows nothing about the Islamic jihad ideology.
Islam had been brought into the trial numerous times, Judge Saylor noted, but there are millions of Muslims who do not support violence.
Judge Saylor has learned his PC Catechism well, but the existence of millions of Muslims who do not support violence does not change the fact that those Muslims who are committing acts of violence and working for the supremacy of Islamic Sharia in other ways are doing so in accord with traditional teachings of the religion. As long as this goes unrecognized by the politically correct establishment, this will continue. Only by recognizing it can non-Muslim authorities formulate effective ways to resist the jihad threat in all its forms.