Busted: Muslim charity leader in Chicago charged with funding terrorism

A federal grand jury indicted the leader of a major Muslim charity for allegedly financing Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist group.

The charges against Enaam Arnaout, longtime head of the Chicago-based Benevolence International Foundation who has been in jail since April, “are the government’s gravest criminal charges against any Islamic charitable official since the war on terror began,” according to the Washington Post.

Documents captured in Bosnia appear to show that the Benevolence Foundation had close ties to al Qaeda since the terrorist group’s founding in 1988.

The case adds new weight to concerns that ostensibly “mainstream” groups purporting to represent Americans of Arab descent or Muslim heritage are indeed operational fronts and controlled organizations for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Many of those groups loudly protested federal crackdowns on alleged terrorist fronts over the past 11 months, but they are strangely silent about this week’s grand jury indictment.