Muslim Anger Burns Over Lingering Probe of Charities

Muslim leaders held news conferences denouncing the raids as violations of their civil rights and denying terrorist ties. One woman whose home was searched said agents, brandishing weapons, broke in and held her and her teenage daughter in handcuffs for five hours.

Federal officials believed at the time that they had ample evidence of terrorism connections, court documents show.

The searches primarily targeted a group of Middle Eastern men who operated a tightly connected Herndon-based network of more than 100 organizations, known collectively as the Safa Group, some of which existed only on paper, according to court documents.

In an affidavit filed in support of the search warrants and unsealed in 2003, Homeland Security agent David Kane wrote that he had "seen evidence of the transfer of large amounts of funds from the Safa Group organizations directly to terrorist-front organizations since the early 1990's." Kane named Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which kills Israeli civilians in suicide bombings and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, as a likely recipient of Safa Group funding.

Kane also laid out alleged ties between Arian and IIIT, writing that IIIT was once the largest contributor to what he called a Palestinian Islamic Jihad front group run by Arian. A federal jury in Tampa last year deadlocked on nine charges that Arian aided terrorists and acquitted him of eight other counts. He then pleaded guilty to one count of supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was sentenced to 57 months in prison. With time already served, he is expected to be released from prison and deported next year.

Moreno characterized Arian's ties to IIIT as "extremely limited and extremely old.'' She said Arian had been transferred to a jail in Virginia, but she could not give a date for his grand jury appearance.

Luque said her Herndon clients are all U.S. citizens who have no terrorist ties and "have embraced this country.'' Some of the organizations raided in 2002 have closed, including several affiliated with Alamoudi, who is serving a 23-year prison term. But the Herndon groups, including IIIT and Safa Trust Inc., are still operating, Luque said. One of the main organizations named in the 2002 search warrant, the SAAR Foundation, dissolved in 2000.

Luque ridiculed the argument that the investigation is highly complex. "A snail could have looked through the property seized quicker than they have,'' she said.

Experts in terrorism financing said such investigations, which may involve layers of shell companies in offshore jurisdictions, are highly complicated. Lee Wolosky, who tracked terrorist financing for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said the Herndon probe should be judged more by whether it helped investigators gain crucial intelligence on terrorist ties than by how many indictments it yields.

"Just because there haven't been domestic indictments doesn't mean the government isn't advancing its interests,'' Wolosky said.

But Richard K. Gordon, a former specialist in money laundering and terrorist financing at the International Monetary Fund, said the Herndon probe seems "to be taking a long time.''

"After 4 1/2 years, you ought to be able to get the evidence or decide you can't,'' Gordon said. "It's not like we're infiltrating the Mafia, where it takes five years to get insiders.''

Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report.