The latest lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing U.S.-based charities from interacting with and financing global terrorists.
The lawsuit was filed recently by John Loftus, a former federal Nazi war crimes prosecutor who currently is president of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.
It alleges that a professor at Tampa’s University of South Florida, Sami Al-Arian, is the central figure in an operation targeting Israel and the United States with terrorist attacks.
Analysts say some U.S. citizens are turning to such lawsuits because of frustration with perceived government inaction against terrorist groups.
“The lawsuits are really being used to move against these organizations where the government has either been slow or reluctant,” said Matthew Epstein, deputy director of the Investigative Project, a think tank in Washington that tracks terrorism and works closely with federal authorities.
“There’s a lot of evidence that has come out, either through other trials or investigative work and media stories, that exposes a lot of these charities and networks in the United States that hatch terrorism,” Epstein said.
Loftus’ lawsuit alleges that millions of dollars in funding for the terrorist activities of al-Qaida, Islamic Jihad and Hamas originates in Saudi Arabia, and is laundered through Swiss bank accounts and Islamic charities operating in Florida.
In his lawsuit, Loftus charges that Al-Arian used his status as a university professor to set up what Loftus claims were terrorist front groups, including the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, International Committee for Palestine, the Islamic Concern Project and other charities.
Al-Arian, who maintains that he is the victim of a government witch hunt, has been suspended from the university. The university president is to decide in the coming weeks if he will be reinstated.
The lawyer for Al-Arian, Robert McKee of Tampa, Fla., did not respond to calls seeking comment on the case.
However, in a local press interview in Florida he was dismissive of the complaint, calling it “frivolous.”
FBI agents continue to pore over documents seized in a 1995 raid of Al-Arian’s home and offices. According to a New York Times report, they are trying to trace at least $650,000 that Al-Arian and associates sent overseas in the 1980s and 1990s, some of which, investigators suspect, went to Islamic Jihad.
The FBI began investigating Al-Arian in 1995 when Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, a professor whom Al-Arian brought to Tampa and put in charge of his university think tank, left and then resurfaced in Damascus as the head of Islamic Jihad.
According to the Times, investigators have information suggesting that Al-Arian also is part of Islamic Jihad’s leadership.
A recent case in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Boim v. Quranic Literacy, was helpful to the Loftus case.
David Boim, an American, was killed in a Hamas attack in the West Bank in 1996. The case named an array of individuals and organizations allied with Hamas — such as Quranic Literacy and the Holy Land Foundation — in the United States.
The judge in the Boim case ruled that plaintiffs who have been wronged by terrorists have cause to file civil lawsuits, even against the charities that fund the terrorists.
“It’s very, very on point with my case,” Loftus said. “You can’t use a charitable group for terrorism.”
The information that would prove his case is in CIA, FBI and National Security Agency files, said Loftus, who claims to have a memorandum, written to the former director of counterterrorism at the CIA, to that effect.
The information was gathered by intelligence agencies, Loftus said.
“Essentially, the Israelis had a super-mole at the headquarters of Islamic Jihad in Syria. This mole reported on all of their activities until he was tortured to death in 1995,” Loftus said.
Loftus charges that millions of dollars raised by the charities — including funds from the Al-Rajhi family of Saudi Arabia — were used to support terrorist training, create safe houses, provide equipment and host “terrorist conventions” in the United States.
The front groups were created in Florida, Loftus believes, because laws overseeing charities there are somewhat lax.
Loftus initiated the litigation against Al-Arian a few months ago, but the judge dismissed it on procedural grounds, asked him to refile the complaint and prove that he had the legal standing to sue for damages.
Loftus then donated money to the charities, whose marketing materials state that the funds are used for religious and educational purposes. Since Loftus alleges that the money is being used for other purposes, he claims that he was harmed under Florida’s consumer fraud and deceptive practices laws.
The case currently is moving into the discovery phase, where witnesses will be deposed and documents exchanged.
Rumors of Saudi funding for terrorism have circulated in the intelligence community for some time. Until the Sept. 11 attacks, however, U.S. administrations didn’t investigate the charges thoroughly, critics say.