Act! for America - Muslim activist group CAIR is unusually quiet about longtime board member's deportation

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Muslim activist group CAIR is unusually quiet about longtime board member's deportation

[Excerpt: "Authorities say Sadoun, a native of Jordan, left the U.S. before Friday's deportation order was signed. He served in the past decade as a staffer at the Islamic Society of North Texas in Richardson, and at Brighter Horizons Academy in Garland. In the 1990s, he was an imam at a mosque in Tulsa, Okla."]

Dallas Morning News - Blog
February 24, 2010
by Brooks Egerton

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a high-profile national organization that speaks out frequently when it believes Muslims are being mistreated.

Recently, for example, it denounced the introduction of full-body scanners in airports as a violation of Islamic rules about modesty. Its Web site carries many press releases on a variety of civil rights issues.

But CAIR has been quiet about the recent deportation order against Richardson resident Nabil Sadoun (left), a longtime member of the group's national and DFW chapter boards.

When I asked national CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper for an interview, he responded with this e-mail: "Peace. Perhaps speak to his attorney. She is the best source of information on the case." Hooper did not respond when I followed up with written questions about CAIR's view of the deportation case and its relationship with Sadoun.

Sadoun's attorney, Kimberly Kinser of Richardson, didn't respond to my phone call and e-mail.

Federal authorities say Sadoun, when applying for an immigrant visa in 1993, failed to disclose his role in founding the United Association for Studies and Research, my Dallas Morning News colleague Jason Trahan reports. The FBI says the UASR, based in a suburb of Washington, D.C., and now defunct, was formed to benefit Hamas.

The U.S. later designated Hamas a terrorist organization because of its support for suicide bombings against Israel.

Former leaders of UASR include a top Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzook, who is wanted on terrorism charges in the U.S. and believed to be in Syria; and Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is imprisoned in this country on a 2004 terrorism financing conviction related to a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's crown prince.

Federal prosecutors named UASR and CAIR as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Leaders of that defunct Richardson foundation were convicted in 2008 of aiding Hamas.

CAIR denies wrongdoing. It says it was unfairly listed as a co-conspirator and had no forum for rebutting the government's claim.

Authorities say Sadoun, a native of Jordan, left the U.S. before Friday's deportation order was signed. He served in the past decade as a staffer at the Islamic Society of North Texas in Richardson, and at Brighter Horizons Academy in Garland. In the 1990s, he was an imam at a mosque in Tulsa, Okla.