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January 7, 2006
US: Chicago Mosque Leader Gets 20 Years' Jail On Drugs Charge
On 5 August, 2004, Tariq Isa was arrested as he arrived at O'Hare international airport, on a flight from the Middle East. A Palestinian-American, Isa was the treasurer and youth counselor at the Martyr Izzedine Al-Qassam mosque on West 63rd Street, Chicago, which is also known as the Chicago Islamic Center.
Isa, a father of five, was accused of seeking to distribute 1.73 million tablets of pseudoephedrine, in an indictment which had been filed in a federal court in Chicago, but unsealed only after his arrest. On 10 August, a federal judge, Amy St Eve, ordered Isa to remain in custody, on charges that he trafficked in a chemical, (pseudoephedrine) which was essential to the manufacture of an illegal narcotic (methamphetamine).
As Robert Spencer noted at the time, Isa was the third person from the South Side Mosque's leadership to be in trouble with the law. An indictment had been filed against Ghassan Zayed Ballut and Hatem Fariz in Florida, in 2003, for alleged financing of Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad. Assistant Attorney Lisa Noller claimed in court that Isa, Ballut and Fariz were the only members of the Mosque of the Martyr Izzedine Al-Qassam with the power to act as signatories in the mosque bank account.
Accused with Sami al-Arian, Ballut was found not guilty on December 7, 2005 of all charges laid against him. Hatem Naji Fariz was acquitted on 25 charges, with the jury unable to decide on eight others, but he still faces federal charges in Chicago of cheating the food stamp system and money-laundering.
On Friday September 2, 2005, 57-year old Isa pleaded guilty to the distribution charge. He admitted that he knew that the pseudoephedrine which he wanted to sell would be utilised in the production of methamphetamine.
News from CBS2 Chicago and Daily SouthTown states that yesterday (Friday 6), Isa received 20 years for trying to buy 1.73 million nasal decongestant tablets.
The plan to buy the pseudoephedrine, which was arranged with a government informant and another individual, had never come to fruition. Isa was said by prosecutors to have paid $66,780 to the government informant. $100,000 cash had been seized from Isa in 2002, two years before he was officially indicted.
Isa, who lives in the suburb of Cicero, had been asked about the mosque when he had attempted to plea-bargain, but he refused to talk about the mosque. Lisa Noller claimed that with no useful information on the mosque, there was nothing for the prosecution to bargain with.
The US district judge at the sentencing, Amy St Eve, noted that when Isa was conspiring to purchase pseudoephedrine, he was already on probation for a previous conviction of pseudoephedrine-pushing from 2002.
"He's out there doing the same thing while he's on probation. There is a need for a just punishment here," she said, and sentenced him to 235 months in prison, or twenty years.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 7, 2006 5:06 PM
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