A group of activist ministers in Ohio has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax status of an outfit that sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast, saying that it took money six years ago from an alleged Islamic terrorist financier. ClergyVoice said in a letter to the IRS that the Fellowship Foundation violated its standing as a tax-exempt group when it accepted two $25,000 checks in May and June of 2004 from the Islamic American Relief Agency, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The Islamic charity turned up on the Senate Finance Committee list of terrorist financiers in January 2004.
The Fellowship Foundation told the Post it has tightened its vetting of donors and that it neither retained the relief agency money nor used it to pay for trips taken by GOP senators such as Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada. The foundation has been associated with a house on C Street near Capitol Hill where several senators and House members stay while in Washington.
The Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency was raided and shut down by federal agents in October 2004, but in the months following it started a quiet lobbying campaign to clear its name. Government wiretaps and material collected in the raid resulted in federal indictments of the agency's officers and ultimately a guilty plea this year by its chief executive, Mubarak Hamed. He acknowledged sending one of the $25,000 checks to the International Foundation -- a name used by the Fellowship group -- in 2004.
In his plea, Hamed said the plan was to pay for lobbying by former Rep. Mark......
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