Islamic Charity Indictment Dismissed

By MIKE ROBINSON
.c The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge dismissed charges Friday against an Islamic charity accused of lying about its ties to Osama bin Laden, saying the perjury law didn't apply in this case.

Federal agents raided Benevolence International Foundation's suburban Chicago headquarters last December, and its bank accounts were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The charity and its executive director, Enaam Arnaout, were charged a few months later with perjury based on affidavits in a civil lawsuit in which Arnaout denied the group funds terrorism or military activity. The lawsuit was brought by Benevolence against the federal government and sought release of the group's frozen funds.

But in her 22-page decision, U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall said the Supreme Court has ruled the perjury law does not apply to such affidavits. She said perjury charges might have been appropriate had Arnaout made false statements in a deposition.

``We respectfully disagree with the judge's ruling,'' U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement. ``The opinion relies on a technical interpretation of the perjury statute and has no bearing on the facts of the case.''

A new criminal complaint was filed Friday night, charging the charity with obstruction of justice and making false statements for the same alleged conduct, said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.

Benevolence attorney Matthew Piers said Gottschall's decision was ``the product of a courageous jurist.''

The 39-year-old, Syrian-born Arnaout, who has been jailed since April, acknowledges that he has met bin Laden but has denied having anything to do with terrorism. The U.S. attorney's office said he was expected to remain in custody over the weekend.

A hearing in the case was scheduled for Monday before Gottschall.

Freezing the assets of Benevolence and another Chicago-area Islamic charity, Global Relief Foundation, were among the most visible actions of the federal government's effort to shut off the flow of dollars to terrorists.

Both groups deny they provide any support to terrorists.

Arnaout's arrest followed a March 14 raid on Benevolence offices in Bosnia in which police seized computer hard drives containing images of bin Laden and Arnaout. The photos appeared to have been taken in the same rural setting, but the two men were not in any of the same pictures.

An FBI affidavit said Arnaout knew bin Laden well in the 1980s when he lived in Pakistan.

The government also has made public documents showing that Arnaout sponsored a trip to Bosnia by Mamdouh Salim, who later pleaded guilty to attempting to murder a New York prison guard by stabbing him in the eye.

Salim, reportedly a close associate of bin Laden's, is awaiting trial on conspiracy charges in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The bombings killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

Piers acknowledged that Arnaout had sponsored the trip but said he thought Salim was a businessman who could provide jobs for the needy.