Ex-Congressman Guilty, took cash to help get Islamic Charity removed from Terror List

[Lady Liberty]

LOOK HOW LONG THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON - OVER 20 YEARS! MUSLIMS IMMIGRATING INTO THIS COUNTRY BUT WANTING TO FORCE US TO CHANGE OUR CUSTOMS TO SHARIA LAW RATHER THAN ASSIMILATE INTO OUR CULTURE. TERRORISTS HIDE BEHIND CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS TO RAISE FUNDS. CORRUPT POLITICIANS ASSIST THEM.


Ex-congressman guilty, took cash to help get Islamic charity removed from terror list
Posted on July 9, 2010
by creeping sharia

Siljander was a Republican although that word is only used once in this article, the second to last word, and nowhere does it describe the terror-linked congressman as such. hat tip @ttbl via Herald Palladium > Siljander faces prison after plea.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Mark Siljander, a former congressman from Southwest Michigan, faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to two charges in connection with his ties to an Islamic charity alleged to have funded terrorist organizations.

Siljander, 59, who served in Congress from 1981 to 1987 and also served one year as a United Nations delegate, pleaded guilty in federal court in Kansas City to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Beth Phillips, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said Siljander, of Great Falls, Va., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey to the obstruction charge contained in an Oct. 21, 2008, federal indictment and to an additional charge filed Wednesday involving his dealings with the Islamic American Relief Agency of Columbia, Mo.

Don Ledford, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said five people, including Siljander, have pleaded guilty in the case, wrapping up a complex investigation that has gone on for years. Siljander was to have gone on trial next week.

The original three charges against Siljander for money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice were part of a 42-count indictment against the IARA and its officers.

The indictment alleged that the IARA stole money from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The IARA had been a federal contractor doing aid work in Africa. The government dropped IARA from its roster of contractors after suspicions arose that it was supporting the Afghan Taliban and funding international terrorists.

IARA, which served as the U.S. office of an international organization headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, was closed in October 2004 after being identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist organization that provided support to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The executive director and other IARA staff members have also pleaded guilty in the case.

Mubrak Hamed, the director, pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to transfer illegally more than $1 million to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions and to obstruct the administration of laws governing tax-exempt charities.

According to Wednesday’s plea agreements, between March and May 2004 Hamed and Abdel Azim El-Siddig, a co-defendant in the case who also pleaded guilty Wednesday, hired Siljander to lobby for IARA’s removal from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of charities suspected of funding international terrorism and its reinstatement as an approved government contractor.

Siljander instructed IARA to transfer $75,000 to him by funneling it through nonprofit organizations, the U.S. attorney’s office said. In exchange, Siljander acted as an agent for IARA by contacting Senate Finance Committee members, USAID, the Justice Department and the Army in an effort to have IARA removed from the list of charities suspected of funding terrorism.

Federal law requires anyone who serves as an agent of a foreign entity to register with the U.S. attorney general.

In pleading guilty Wednesday to obstruction of justice, Siljander admitted that earlier he had repeatedly lied to FBI agents and prosecutors in denying that he was hired to advocate for IARA and claiming that payments from IARA to him were donations intended to help him write a book about bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity. He also pleaded guilty to a new charge filed Wednesday, acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Ledford said that when Siljander is sentenced the U.S. attorney’s office expects that charges of money laundering and conspiracy will be dropped.

Lance Sandage of Kansas City, one of Siljander’s lawyers, issued the following statement Wednesday afternoon:

“Today Mark Siljander has accepted responsibility for his conduct in his pleas to an obstruction of justice charge and a violation of a regulatory statute. We would point out that all other charges of conspiracy and money laundering against him will be dismissed, and of course no terrorism charges were alleged against Mark Siljander.”

Siljander faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison without parole and a $500,000 fine. Without the plea deal, he could have been sentenced to up to 80 years in prison, Ledford said.

No sentencing date has been set.

Siljander, who lived in Three Rivers when he represented Southwest Michigan in Congress, was ousted from Congress by current U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who beat him in the 1986 Republican primary.