Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation was a charity foundation, based in Saudi Arabia, alleged by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in a September 2004 press release to have "direct links" with Osama bin Laden.[1] The charity is now banned worldwide by United Nations Security Council Committee 1267.[2]
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury had already banned various branches of this organization at various times, including the US branch on 9 September 2004.[1] Under various names it had branches in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Tanzania, and the United States.[2]
There was one branch of the foundation in the United States, located at Ashland, Oregon. The Ashland chapter assisted the Islamic Society of Springfield, Missouri, in the purchase of a prayer house, but the Springfield organization shares no common directors and is not and never was under the control of the Al-Haramain organization. Directors of the Ashland chapter were Suliman Al-Buthe ( سليمان البوثي ) and Aqeel Abdul Aziz Al-Aqil ( عقيل عبد العزيز العقيل ), although Mr. Al-Aqil has long since resigned as a director. Mr. Al-Buthe and Mr. Al-Aqil are now personally embargoed worldwide by the UN.[2]
The American branch of Al-Haramain Foundation filed a lawsuit on February 28, 2006.[3] The suit asserted that the Bush administration had circumvented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by authorizing warrantless wiretaps. They asserted that the President lacked the authority to authorize wiretaps that circumvented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Three individuals whose conversations were intercepted, Suliman al-Buthe, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, learned of the eavesdropping when U.S. officials accidentally delivered logs of phone calls to them.[3] Al-Buthe, who had traveled intermittently to the United States but who has always resided in Saudi Arabia, had been one of the directors of the Ashland chapter. Belew and Ghafoor were two of the Foundation's U.S. lawyers.
Thomas H. Nelson of Welches, Oregon, another Foundation lawyer, filed the lawsuit. Court records show he filed a motion to place the relevant material under seal.
On March 31, 2010, US District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the Bush administration should have gotten warrants for its wiretaps of Al Haramain.[4]
Separately, the charity filed suit in August 2007, challenging the Department of Treasury's 2004 designation of Al Haramain as a "specially designated global terrorist" and the seizure and freezing of all of its assets.[5] In September 2011, an appeals court ruled that United States officials correctly designated the charity as supporting terrorism, but found the Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control improperly seized the charity’s assets using a “blocking order” to freeze them without a warrant supported by probable cause, violating the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures, and that they also violated the charity's procedural due process rights by failing to give a post-seizure explanation of the basis for the seizure. [6]