Defunct terrorist organization with Columbia ties ordered to forfeit assets

A now-dissolved organization that authorities said supported terrorism and had an interest in a piece of Boone County real estate was ordered in federal court Thursday to divest and transfer its assets to an unrelated charity.

The Islamic American Relief Organization, IARA for short, masqueraded as a charity, using that status to solicit donations that it used to help the terrorist group Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Pakistan, according to a news release from the office of Tom Larson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. The group had been based in Columbia. While the property in Boone County has yet to be sold, $818,894 has been sent to Heifer International, which helps farmers and fights drought in east Africa, authorities said.

IARA in July pleaded guilty, through a representative of its board of directors, to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of obstructing the administration of internal revenue laws. The organization admitted it had illegally sent $1.4 million to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions.

Congress had placed IARA on a list of groups that supported terrorism and the Office of Foreign Assets Control had designated it as a global terrorist organization. It was a member of a larger organization headquartered in Sudan that supported al-Qaeda, according to the release, and hired a former congressman, codefendant Mark Siljander, to act as an unregistered agent who directed the organization to conceal payments to him by routing them through not-for-profit entities.

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