JEDDAH, 7 October 2004 — The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation has not received any official notice of its dissolution, a source at the charity institution said yesterday.
“I can assure you that we did not receive any official notice regarding this matter and that is all I can say for now,” the source said about agency reports on Tuesday that the Ministry of Endowment and Islamic Affairs had declared the closure of the institution.
“The ministry has asked the management of the foundation to close its doors and dismiss its personnel,” with immediate effect, the news agencies quoted an unnamed official as saying.
Al-Haramain figured among a number of Saudi charities accused by Washington of financing terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It was receiving around $50 million a year in charity money to spend in a number of projects around the world.
A senior Saudi official said in June that Al-Haramain and other private groups would be dissolved or have their international operations and assets merged into a new Saudi National Commission for Charitable Work Abroad.
Adel Al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, said the commission would be “subject to strict financial legal oversight, and will operate according to clear policies to ensure that charitable funds intended to help the needy are not misused.”
Al-Jubeir explained that the commission would take over the activities of Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia. His remarks followed an announcement by Riyadh in February that it would set up a body that will be the sole authority in running charity work abroad.
Meanwhile, Dabbas Al-Dabbasi, director of Al-Haramain, resigned three months ago after the accounts of the institution were frozen in Saudi Arabia. He said the institution was in international spotlight because its charity activities covered 75 countries in a decade, with emphasis on general education.
Al-Dabbasi said the institution won all security-related cases that were filed against it. A team of lawyers working under the name “Friends of Charity Institutions” fights legal cases against acquisition of its assets, he said.
“In every country we work in we face cases against us and we win them,” he added.
Al-Haramain was initially set up in Karachi, Pakistan in 1988 by Aqil Al-Aqil. He served as its head until Saudi authorities removed him last year after the United States accused him of funding terror and put his name on a list of terrorism financiers, a charge he denied.
Al-Aqil had moved the charity’s main office to Riyadh and the institution at one point had more than 5,000 employees, most of them volunteers, according to charity officials. But 14 of its branches abroad were closed in the wake of the US accusations and its employees dwindled to 250.
