BREAKING: Obama
Knowingly Funded Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate
ByRyan Saavedra
@RealSaavedra
July 25, 2018
A new report released on Wednesday revealed that the Obama
administration knowingly provided an Islamic terrorist-financing organization
with hundreds of thousands of dollars despite the fact that the group had been
designated as a terrorist-financing organization for a decade by the U.S.
government.
Obama officials approved the release of well over
$100,000 even after they were informed that the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief
Agency (ISRA) was affiliated with Osama bin Laden and Maktab al-Khidamat (MK),
which eventually became al-Qaeda.
ISRA, also referred to as the Islamic African Relief
Agency (IARA), received a $200,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Obama
administration, which released at least $115,000 to the terrorist-financing
organization. National Review
reports:
According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established
formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s
group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help
“relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that
ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas
suicide bombings.
The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches,
including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA).
Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred
over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including,
reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
National Review notes that in July 2014 the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) approved $723,405 of U.S. taxpayer funds
to go to World Vision Inc., and that out of that money, "$200,000 was to
be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA."
World Vision had informed the USAID in 2014 that ISRA was
on the designated terrorist organization list and subsequently had to wait for
an assessment from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control (OFAC) before they could receive the money.
OFAC confirmed in January 2015 that ISRA was a designated
terrorist organization and rejected World Vision from obtaining "a license
to engage in transactions with [ISRA]." National Review adds:
Despite OFAC’s ruling, in February, World Vision wrote to
OFAC and Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as
director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to
OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.”
According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision
argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be
jeopardized.”...
...Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close
collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a
license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a
one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was
for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an
unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”
While the Trump administration has focused on destroying
Islamic terrorism, those groups thrived under the Obama administration.
"[In 2014], when the U.S. first began its campaign
against the terror group, ISIS had a presence in seven countries," The Hill reported
in 2016. "That figure rose to 13 in 2015, and today the White House
document shows that ISIS is operating in 18 countries."
The Obama administration also killed a massive
investigation into Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist group,
allowing them to "become one of the biggest transnational organized crime
groups in the world," veteran DEA supervisory agent Jack Kelly told Politico.
Obama tried to downplay his failure to contain terrorism
by claiming that under his administration, "the number of terrorist
incidents [had] not substantially increased."
Left-leaning Politifact rated Obama's
statement as "mostly false."
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