WASHINGTON, 3 December 2003 — It was a dinner like no other in congressional history. On a frigid night in early 1996, top government figures joined Muslim Americans in the Hart Senate Office Building for solemn prayers and a roast beef supper, the first such celebration marking the Islamic holy days of Ramadan.
The guest list was impressive: Clinton administration officials, ambassadors and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a prominent Jewish senator. To Abdurahman Alamoudi, the charismatic Muslim leader who organized the Feb. 13, 1996, dinner, it was a landmark in his community’s struggle for political recognition.
“I was elated to be there,” Alamoudi recalled. “That was a fulfillment of part of the dream.”
Today, Alamoudi sits in a green jumpsuit in the Alexandria, Va., jail, charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya, a US-designated sponsor of terrorism. He has pleaded not guilty.
US officials have also alleged that the Falls Church, Va., resident funneled money to organizations that support Middle East terrorist groups, but they have not charged him with any crime related to those allegations. His attorneys say the claims are unfounded.
Perhaps no other arrest since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has so shaken the US Muslim community or so reverberated through Washington’s political elite. Alamoudi is no youthful jihadi, no dirty-bomb conspirator. He is a well-heeled advocate who had represented American Muslims in White House meetings. He had helped found the Pentagon’s Muslim chaplain program. He also was a pillar of the local Muslim community, generously donating to charitable events and running a free health clinic in Falls Church.
In nearly two dozen interviews, Alamoudi’s friends, his former colleagues and US officials depict him as a man savvy enough to enjoy great success working the US political system but too naive or stubborn to abide by American financial practices.
US officials suspect him of more sinister intentions. They said Alamoudi cultivated a moderate image that masks support for a radical agenda he long privately espoused. They point to his contacts with people the United States has designated terrorist sponsors, a statement of support for a 1994 terrorist attack and his association with groups suspected of funneling money to terrorists. They also question the destination of millions of dollars that passed through his personal bank accounts.
In the first interview since his Sept. 28 arrest, Alamoudi denied he was in contact with terrorists or supported violence. Speaking from behind a plexiglass divider, he declined to offer a detailed defense but said he approached Libya because he believed its relations with the United States were improving. “The money that I raised came to the United States,” he said in the November interview, “and I spent it here helping the Muslim community.”
Alamoudi, 51, grew up in Ethiopia, the son of a Yemeni businessman from a prominent Arab clan. After what he describes as a middle-class childhood, he graduated from Cairo University in 1979.
With his homeland in turmoil — his father was slain for supporting Eritrean separatists, according to court papers — Alamoudi headed to the United States, where he earned an MBA in 1988 from Southeastern University in Washington.
But politics became his passion. In 1990, after working with several organizations, Alamoudi helped found the American Muslim Council (AMC), the first major advocacy group of its kind in the US capital.
His timing was superb. A wave of well-educated Muslim immigrants were settling in the Washington suburbs and other parts of the country. Meanwhile, as US involvement in the Middle East deepened, the government was eager to reach out to Muslims. Alamoudi seemed moderate, a man who denounced terrorism and supported the 1991 Gulf War.
The council wanted to “tell mainstream America that the Muslim community ... is part and parcel of America,” Alamoudi said in the interview. At the same time, he said, it wanted to “tell the Muslim community we need to organize ourselves, to get and obtain our rights.”
Charming and energetic, Alamoudi helped assemble a diverse group of Muslim Americans that included blacks, Arabs and South Asians. He was devout, but he worked easily with secular-oriented Muslims and even feminists, who are anathema to many traditional Muslims. He was a one-man service agency, fielding calls from local Muslims seeking jobs, handing out money to mosques and attending countless funerals.
“The reason the community loves him so much (is), anybody who had a project, no matter how kooky, he would try to help,” said Mahdi Bray, a local Muslim. “He’s maxed out credit cards trying to help people.”
The council soon found influential allies. Alamoudi, its executive director, promoted interfaith activities with Roman Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders. “He was very easy to work with, very respectful of the diverse religious groups in all these coalitions in the early and mid-’90s, very outspoken in terms of the need for interfaith cooperation,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, a prominent Reform Jewish activist, who later diverged with Alamoudi over Israel.
Alamoudi’s energetic networking soon helped the council develop contacts at the highest levels of government. Its members met with members of Congress and officials from the National Security Council and Justice Department and even, on several occasions, with President Bill Clinton. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton hosted one Ramadan reception, and prominent figures such as Lieberman spoke at others.
Lieberman spokesman Matt Gobush said the senator met with Alamoudi several times in an effort to “reach out to Americans of all faiths.” Lieberman was not alone in engaging Alamoudi.
The State Department sent him to Muslim countries at least six times in the 1990s, to speak on religious tolerance and Muslim life in the United States. “Arabic speakers that would say the right things to Arab audiences were in short supply,” explained a State Department official. “Abdurahman Alamoudi got really good reviews. ... We would have used him more if we could have.”
Some Muslims complained that the contacts with the government produced little more than photos. But they were powerful symbols to a community that had been wary of US politics. And Alamoudi reveled in the limelight. “Abdurahman reminded me very much of a big kid — he enjoyed it,” Bray said. “He would go into the late hours, from one meeting to another. He was a dynamo.”
From the very founding of the AMC, Alamoudi was the chief fundraiser, often bringing in money from the Gulf nations, associates said. But he also built a reputation for refusing to account for how the money was spent, they said.
Alamoudi declined to speak in detail about his AMC fundraising but said it had nothing to do with Libya. “I have connections in the Middle East. My family helped me with a lot of this,” he said.
Investigators are trying to follow Alamoudi’s personal money trail. On tax returns Alamoudi said he never earned more than $58,000 a year, but investigators have alleged that $2.17 million moved through his bank accounts from 1996 to 2002. Court papers show that Alamoudi’s brothers, who live in Saudi Arabia, gave him about $550,000 in unreported gifts from 1997 to 2002. He declined to comment on his personal funds other than to say he used the money to help American Muslims.
Even as Alamoudi was being lauded by US diplomats in the late 1990s, he was secretly dealing with a country the US government called a sponsor of terror, according to prosecutors in his case.
The 18-count indictment handed up Oct. 23 charges Alamoudi with money laundering, fraud and illegal travel in his relationships with the government of Moammar Qaddafi. As he passed through London on his way to Syria in August, prosecutors contended, Alamoudi received $340,000 in sequentially numbered $100 bills from a representative of a charity funded by the Libyan government. Alamoudi intended to illegally ship the money back to the United States, the indictment alleges. But British authorities discovered the cash in his luggage and confiscated it.
Doing business with Libya is illegal under US law because of that nation’s role in the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and other terrorist acts.
In the interview, Alamoudi said his contacts with Libya began in the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration lifted some sanctions against Tripoli. He declined to comment further.
According to court papers, Alamoudi told British authorities that he had met the Libyan ambassador in 1997. The ambassador suggested he seek the release of frozen Libyan assets in the United States in exchange for part of the proceeds, the documents said. Alamoudi said he lobbied White House officials to no avail, the documents show.
Alamoudi also said he had traveled to Tripoli at least 10 times, according to the court papers. He did little to hide the trips. Alamoudi twice used his American Express card to buy airplane tickets to Tripoli in his own name, and US authorities found Libyan visas from 2001 and 2002 in Alamoudi’s US passport, the court papers show. In 1999, the American Muslim Foundation even listed a $5,000 contribution from Libya on its US tax form, according to the court documents.
In a separate document filed Sept. 30 to argue for Alamoudi’s continued detention, prosecutors also contended that Alamoudi has ties to organizations and individuals linked to the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, and Al-Qaeda. They have not charged him with any crimes relating to those allegations.
Alamoudi said he had held only ceremonial posts with the organizations listed in court papers. “I might have signed a check or two, but I had no involvement in those organizations,” he said.
Prosecutors also alleged in court that Alamoudi explicitly endorsed a terrorist act. They read a transcript of a 1999 conversation between Alamoudi and an unidentified person during a State Department-sponsored trip to the Middle East. According to the transcript, Alamoudi said the 1998 Al-Qaeda attacks on two US embassies in Africa were not effective because they killed hundreds of Africans but no Americans.
In the interview, Alamoudi said such statements were part of an effort to win the trust of those who support violence and get “people from the extremist view to come back (to) the center.”
Even before the current case, however, Alamoudi was under investigation for possible terrorist financing, according to a government document and a Department of Homeland Security official. A search-warrant affidavit filed in March 2002 said Alamoudi was an officer or director of several organizations that are part of what the government calls the Safa Group, a network of Muslim charities, businesses and think tanks based in Virginia. The government is investigating whether those organizations were used to funnel millions of dollars to terrorists. No one has been charged in the cases. Nancy Luque, an attorney for many of the groups and individuals, has categorically denied they have any connection to terrorism.
Stanley Cohen, Alamoudi’s attorney, said the government was trying to build a case of guilt by association because Alamoudi is a Muslim. “At the end of the day, you have a case about a regulatory violation involving Libya, nothing more,” he said.
Despite his declining AMC role after 1996, Alamoudi continued to be involved in politics. Through the years, he contributed more than $20,000 to congressional candidates from both parties. But suddenly his political star plummeted.
In late October 2000, Hillary Clinton, who was running for the US Senate in New York, returned thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Alamoudi and other Muslims after some media described them as supporters of Palestinian violence. Presidential candidate George W. Bush returned $1,000 at the same time.
Alamoudi was furious. When he arrived at a demonstration against US Middle East policies in Lafayette Square on Oct. 28, 2000, friends recall, he angrily took the microphone.
“Anybody’s a supporter of Hamas here?” he yelled as the crowd cheered. “Hear that, Bill Clinton, we are all supporters of Hamas! ... I am also a supporter of Hezbollah!”
Alamoudi later insisted that he had misspoken, that he merely supported self-determination for Palestinians. But soon other elected officials, including Reps. John Sununu, R-N.H., and Jim Moran, D-Va., began returning his contributions.
Some former colleagues said the speech in 2000 was just the most damaging in a string of statements by a man eager to curry favor with all sides.
Ex-colleagues say Alamoudi gradually became more isolated. Yahya Basha, a Muslim council leader, recalls seeing Alamoudi try to enter a reception sponsored by the Arab American Institute in honor of President Bush’s 2001 inauguration. “He was stopped at the door, and they told him he was not invited,” Basha recalled.
Today, Alamoudi’s isolation is near total. He is allowed just limited contact with visitors, who include his wife and four children. Only his appearances in federal court in Alexandria, which attract dozens of local Muslim supporters, still hint at the esteem he once enjoyed.
Alamoudi is unbowed. Even locked in jail, he jokes confidently and waves aside the objections of his attorneys as they try to prevent him from discussing his case.
“My spirits are very high,” he said. “I have support from my community.”
