Charity chief held in arms probe

[Fop 1]

Charity chief held in arms probe

Police unearthed what they called a mini ordnance factory

 

Security forces in Bangladesh have arrested the head of a UK-based charity who had been sought after weapons were found at a school it funded.

 

Officials said Dr Faisal Mostafa, who runs the Manchester-based Green Crescent, was arrested with a local aide on Monday.

 

Security officials raided the Islamic school, or madrassa, last month in the southern district of Bhola.

 

A large cache of weapons and bomb making equipment was found, police say.

 

Remote island

 

The authorities presented Dr Mostafa, 45, at a press conference in Dhaka on Monday. He has not yet been charged with any offence.

 

Officials said he had been arrested in Gazipur, 40km (25 miles) north of Dhaka, on Monday, rejecting relatives' claims that he had been held for a number of days.

 

Dr Mostafa's father, Golam, had told Bangladesh's Daily Star he had been telephoned by relatives in Dhaka last Wednesday who told him that his son was in detention in the capital.

 

Dr Mostafa's whereabouts have been unclear since 24 March, two days after the raid on the madrassa.

 

 

Col Rezaur Rahman Khan of the Rapid Action Battalion told the AFP news agency: "Faisal and the local co-ordinator of the charity were arrested early Monday morning. They are suspected of using the Green Crescent-owned madrassa for militant training and making bombs."

 

Bangladeshi officials say that the madrassa is located on a remote river island only accessible via a drawbridge.

 

They have described the premises as a "mini-ordnance factory".

 

The BBC's Mark Dummett in Dhaka says the government fears that militant groups are rearming after two years of inactivity following the arrest and execution of their leaders.

 

The UK's Charity Commission has formally suspended Dr Mostafa as a trustee and will later consider permanent removal.

 

His family has said Dr Mostafa has done nothing wrong. The BBC contacted Green Crescent on Monday but there was no immediate response.

 

Newspaper reports in Britain say that Dr Mostafa has previously been tried and cleared of planning to cause terrorist acts by using high explosives.

 

In November 2008 Dr Mostafa was found guilty by a court in Manchester of possession of dangerous weapons and making a false statement about baggage cargo at the city's airport.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4560..._arms1_body.jpg

 

 

Well that's a new definition of "charity" on me.

[bobbyshinton 59]

Charity chief held in arms probe

Police unearthed what they called a mini ordnance factory

 

Security forces in Bangladesh have arrested the head of a UK-based charity who had been sought after weapons were found at a school it funded.

 

Officials said Dr Faisal Mostafa, who runs the Manchester-based Green Crescent, was arrested with a local aide on Monday.

 

Security officials raided the Islamic school, or madrassa, last month in the southern district of Bhola.

 

A large cache of weapons and bomb making equipment was found, police say.

 

Remote island

 

The authorities presented Dr Mostafa, 45, at a press conference in Dhaka on Monday. He has not yet been charged with any offence.

 

Officials said he had been arrested in Gazipur, 40km (25 miles) north of Dhaka, on Monday, rejecting relatives' claims that he had been held for a number of days.

 

Dr Mostafa's father, Golam, had told Bangladesh's Daily Star he had been telephoned by relatives in Dhaka last Wednesday who told him that his son was in detention in the capital.

 

Dr Mostafa's whereabouts have been unclear since 24 March, two days after the raid on the madrassa.

 

 

Col Rezaur Rahman Khan of the Rapid Action Battalion told the AFP news agency: "Faisal and the local co-ordinator of the charity were arrested early Monday morning. They are suspected of using the Green Crescent-owned madrassa for militant training and making bombs."

 

Bangladeshi officials say that the madrassa is located on a remote river island only accessible via a drawbridge.

 

They have described the premises as a "mini-ordnance factory".

 

The BBC's Mark Dummett in Dhaka says the government fears that militant groups are rearming after two years of inactivity following the arrest and execution of their leaders.

 

The UK's Charity Commission has formally suspended Dr Mostafa as a trustee and will later consider permanent removal.

 

His family has said Dr Mostafa has done nothing wrong. The BBC contacted Green Crescent on Monday but there was no immediate response.

 

Newspaper reports in Britain say that Dr Mostafa has previously been tried and cleared of planning to cause terrorist acts by using high explosives.

 

In November 2008 Dr Mostafa was found guilty by a court in Manchester of possession of dangerous weapons and making a false statement about baggage cargo at the city's airport.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4560..._arms1_body.jpg

 

 

Well that's a new definition of "charity" on me.

 

Thought this was going to be about Meenzer

[sniffer 0]

You won't get much response to this because people don't like to see what's going on under their noses. Hardly pc to report on this type of thing going on. Better to ignore it and surely it will go away as his family said he hasn't done anything wrong so he must be OK.

[Douggy B 0]

Israel or the US are to blame.

[Fop 1]

Charity or extremist group?

 

Why was Green Crescent, a group implicated in an anti-terror sting in Bangladesh, given charitable status?

Comments (…)

 

o Maajid Nawaz

o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 March 2009 10.30 BST

 

What does a seemingly innocuous public body, the Charity Commission, have to do with global terrorism?

 

I refer here to Bangladesh's anti-terrorist police raid on an orphanage in Bhola, a remote island in southern Bangladesh. After it emerged that the site had been used to stockpile weapons to train for jihadist activity, today it was reported that that the seemingly successful "charity" had expansion plans to build two more schools. Bangladesh police reported that they had discovered weapons, army uniforms, large quantities of ammunition and explosives all stockpiled in that orphanage. They have also reported that police raiding the orphanage found quantities of pro-jihadist writings, including books by Abu Ala Maududi the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, who first described Islam as a political ideology, and literature by Osama Bin Laden.

 

So far this could be just another story of a raid on a training camp posing as a school. The problem is that Bangladeshi and British newspapers then reported that the orphanage was in fact run by Green Crescent, a British-registered charity.

 

The police have arrested four men at the orphanage and are also now holding Faisal Mostafa himself, who they describe as the head of the charity. Bangladeshi media report that Mostafa is a British citizen who divides his time between Bangladesh and Stockport, Manchester. The Charity Commission's website names him as the charity's chief contact and provides his address in Stockport.

 

Faisal Mustafa has previously been tried twice by British courts on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the UK. In 1996 he was arrested and tried for conspiring to cause explosions after chemicals, timers and detonators were discovered his house. He was acquitted of this charge (after claiming he was writing a book on explosives) but was found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm. In 2000, he was arrested again and charged with planning to cause explosions after police discovered a large cache of explosives in Birmingham. In 2002, he was acquitted of this charge – although his co-defendant was convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for the same charge.

 

This is not the first time that the Charity Commission has been embroiled in such controversy. Al-Muhajiroun, the now banned jihadist group, had previously benefited from charitable status. The Muslim Cultural Society of Enfield and Haringey was a registered charity established and run by al-Muhajiroun in May 1994. It was eventually investigated, and closed in November 1999.

 

Furthermore, the Charity Commission was heavily criticised for its slow response in ousting the jihadist Supporters of Shariah group, led by Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Masri, from the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park. Police raids on the mosque in January 2003 showed that it was being used as a storage centre for jihadist materials.

 

As a law graduate, with a track record of supporting due process and opposing the curtailment in our civil liberties under the guise of "fighting terrorism", I would be the first to state here that any charity and its members are innocent until proven guilty. This point is especially pertinent to Green Crescent. However, legal innocence does not mean that a body in question did nothing wrong by civil standards, otherwise we would not all currently be outraged with the collective failures of our nations bankers.

 

The previous and current conduct of Faisal Mostafa, the head of Green Crescent, deserves public scrutiny. The first point is that he was indeed found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm. This raises an immediate question for the Charity Commission to consider. Should people convicted of criminal offences be granted the credibility bestowed upon them by having their ventures officially recognised as a certified charity?

 

Charities are granted significant tax benefits, and an elevated public status is bestowed upon them that attracts trust and goodwill. This deserves an entrance requirement.

 

It's high time that the Charity Commission sought external help and training in counter-terrorism from the relevant statutory bodies set up for this purpose. It's also time that an ethical criteria was applied to the sorts of groups being granted charity status, just as it is to professional bodies, in order to restore public confidence in the vetting process. In the absence of such training, I fear that British tax payers may be tricked into subsidising terrorism.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/be...cent-bangladesh

[Guest alex]

You won't get much response to this because people don't like to see what's going on under their noses. Hardly pc to report on this type of thing going on. Better to ignore it and surely it will go away as his family said he hasn't done anything wrong so he must be OK.

Never had you down as being so self-aware tbh.

Edited April 7, 2009 by alex