FBI Search of Online Firm Called Anti-Arab

Federal agents continued searching the headquarters of an Internet company Thursday as part of an ongoing terrorism investigation, the FBI said. Muslim leaders said authorities acted on scant evidence and anti-Arab stereotypes.

InfoCom Corp., based in suburban Richardson, says it sells computer systems and Internet services to many large Islamic organizations in the United States and businesses in the Middle East.

The FBI said the search, which began Wednesday, was part of a two-year investigation by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force.

FBI spokeswoman Lori Bailey said the investigation was not aimed at InfoCom’s clients but did not say who was targeted.

She said more than 80 agents from the FBI and other federal agencies were searching computer files at the company’s headquarters. Agents took boxes out of the building Wednesday and Thursday.

The search warrant was sealed by a federal magistrate, and the FBI did not elaborate on what evidence it sought.

Bailey denied any bias.

“This is a criminal investigation, not a political investigation,” she said.

InfoCom attorney Mark Enoch said the company has no links to terrorist groups and was cooperating with the FBI, even helping agents navigate the computer system. InfoCom has 15 employees.

Internet service to the company’s 500 clients was cut off by the agents, InfoCom’s Internet operations manager said.

Displaced employees moved across the street to the headquarters of a client, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Muslim charity that supporters of Israel charge raises money for Hamas and other Mideast terrorist groups.

The foundation denied the accusations, and Muslim leaders who gathered outside InfoCom’s offices charged that the raid was orchestrated by Israeli sympathizers.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, linked the raid with U.S. opposition to international efforts to criticize Israel’s handling of the conflict with Palestinians.

Others viewed the raid broadly as the product of anti-Muslim bias.

“We have deep concerns that this once again is an attempt to rush to judgment and to marginalize the American Muslim community simply because . . . many of them are immigrants,” said Mahdi Bray, political advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

The company has close ties to the Holy Land Foundation. Ghassan Elashi, a company vice president and brother of the owner, Bayan Elashi, is chairman of the foundation.

Holy Land Foundation officials say they provide purely humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories and to refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.

Israel, the U.S. State Department and congressional members have accused it of being connected to Hamas, the Palestinian movement that has taken responsibility for bombing civilian targets in the Middle East.