Ex-Lawmaker Indicted in Terror Fund Case

WASHINGTON — A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted yesterday on charges of being part of a terrorist fund-raising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to a supporter of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who has threatened American and international troops in Afghanistan.

Mark Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy, and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Mr. Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Mr. Siljander, who served in the House from 1981–87, was appointed by President Reagan to serve as an American delegate to the United Nations for one year in 1987.

He could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday, and his attorney in Kansas City, J.R. Hobbs, had no immediate comment.

The charges are part of a long-running case against the charity, which had been based in Columbia, Mo. In 2004, the Treasury Department designated the charity as a suspected fund-raiser for terrorists.

In the indictment, the government alleges that IARA employed a man who had served as a fundraising aide to Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.

The indictment accuses IARA of sending approximately $130,000 to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom America has designated a global terrorist.

The money, sent to bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003 and 2004, was masked as donations to an orphanage located in buildings that Mr. Hekmatyar owned.

The charges paint "a troubling picture of an American charity organization that engaged in transactions for the benefit of terrorists and conspired with a former United States congressman to convert stolen federal funds into payments for his advocacy," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said.

After leaving the government, Mr. Siljander founded the Washington-area consulting group Global Strategies Inc.

The indictment says Mr. Siljander was hired by IARA in March 2004 to lobby the Senate Finance Committee in an effort to remove the charity from the panel's list of suspected terror fundraisers.

For his work, IARA paid Mr. Siljander with money that was part of American government funding awarded to the charity years earlier for relief work it promised to perform in Africa, the indictment says.