By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
A federal jury today convicted three
former leaders of a defunct Boston-based
charity of lying to win tax-exempt status
for the charity and then using the
nonprofit to promote jihad and support
Muslim militants overseas.
In the first criminal trial in US
District Court in Boston that explored a
US charity's ties to terrorist groups,
Emadeddin Muntasser, 43, of Braintree, who
owns Logan Furniture Company; Muhamed
Mubayyid, 42, of Shrewsbury; and Samir Al-Monla,
50, of Brookline were found guilty of
conspiracy to defraud the United States
and of a scheme to conceal the true
origins of the charity, Massachusetts Care
International Inc., which operated from
1993 to 2003 and collected $1.7 million in
donations.
"This prosecution serves notice
that we will not tolerate the use of
charities as a means of promoting
terrorism," said Kenneth L. Wainstein,
assistant US attorney general for national
security in a statement released after the
convictions. He called the verdict a
milestone in the government's efforts
"against those who conceal their
support for extremist causes behind the
veil of humanitarianism."
The three men were not charged with
financing terrorist groups, but rather
with failing to tell the Internal Revenue
Service that some of the group's
tax-exempt donations were used to publish
a pro-jihad newsletter and other writings
supporting Muslim militant activities
overseas. An FBI agent testified that in
the early to mid-1990s, Care International
sent more than $130,000 to Makhtab al
Khidamat, an organization considered a
precursor to Al Qaeda that funneled money
to mujahideen fighters in Bosnia.
