Padilla Linked to Closed Islam Charity

Jose Padilla, the American accused of plotting with Al Qaeda to set off a radiation-dispersal bomb, frequented a Florida mosque whose spiritual leader worked for an Islamic charity suspected of helping finance terrorism, local Muslim leaders said Thursday.

Padilla, now under arrest in a Navy brig, is accused of plotting to detonate a “dirty” bomb capable of spewing radiation across an American city. During the 1990s, when he lived in Florida, he attended Al-Iman Mosque here while Raed M. Awad was the imam, members of South Florida’s Islamic community said.

Awad, a 42-year-old Palestinian immigrant, was the chief fund-raiser in Florida for the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief & Development, whose premises were raided and assets frozen by the U.S. government in December.

In announcing the crackdown Dec. 4, President Bush charged that Holy Land used its tax-exempt status to raise $13 million during the year. He said much of that went to Hamas, a group that has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism in Israel.

The charity, based in Richardson, Texas, has hotly denied any connection with terrorism and filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the millions of dollars in donations seized by government agents be released.

Padilla also took classes on the Koran and precepts of the Islamic faith at the Darul Uloom (House of Knowledge) Institute, an Islamic study center in Pembroke Pines, Fla. Its principal, Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, said the young convert might have been pushed toward a more intolerant strain of his new religion through contacts with fundamentalist Arab clergy in the U.S.

“These guys, I would meet them formally as a religious leader occasionally. But I deliberately did not do so more often because I had a feeling that they think Caribbeans or Indians [of the Muslim faith] are less than they are,” said Mohamed, a native of Trinidad who is active in ecumenical organizations promoting understanding among Muslims, Christians and Jews.

“I personally kept away from [Awad],” Mohamed said.

Mohammed Javed Quereshi--the Taco Bell manager who hired Padilla and the Islamic convert he married and later divorced, Cherie Maria Stultz--said both went to Al-Iman Mosque. Quereshi is an activist in the South Florida Muslim community and the co-founder of a mosque and school in the Fort Lauderdale area.

Awad, who family members said has left Florida, collected funds for the Holy Land from as far away as the Caribbean and Latin America. In a newspaper interview, he denied that the foundation’s chief officers were ever involved with Hamas.

“The FBI has been investigating this organization since 1992, and every time they’ve come up with nothing,” Awad told the Orlando Sentinel in December.

For four or five years, family members said, Awad led the prayers at Al-Iman until he left about a year ago. The current imam, Rafiq Mahdi, said he succeeded Awad in 2000.

“I couldn’t say anything about him,” Mahdi said. “I think he’s a Jordanian or a Palestinian. He may have had American citizenship.”

Quereshi said the former imam is Palestinian and that he may have vacated his post for health reasons. “I heard from sources he wasn’t feeling well. Personal problems and some depression,” Quereshi said.

Reached by telephone, Karl Overington, 17, the Muslim cleric’s stepson, said Awad no longer resides at the family’s northwest Fort Lauderdale home. “He moved to Alabama, I believe,” he said.

Overington said he did not know how to contact his stepfather.

For a few months from 1995 to 1997, Padilla attended Saturday religious classes at Darul Uloom, headed by Mohamed.

“The only unusual thing about him was the way he dressed, and he was very quiet,” the principal said. Padilla had petitioned a Broward County court in 1994 to have his name changed, identifying himself as Ibrahim. He wore a red head scarf, or kaffiyeh, “like Yasser Arafat wears,” Mohamed said.

“Nobody else wears this,” added the clergyman. “Even Arabs who come here don’t wear it.”

Mufti Syed M. Hasan, an Indian-born Muslim scholar identified by Mohamed as instructor of the class, said he couldn’t remember teaching Padilla or the other five male and two female pupils.

After being shown a class photo in which Padilla is present, Hasan said he could recall only Padilla “on account of his kaffiyeh.” He said he must have seen him on the street.

Another American who had just embraced Islam and took the same classes said that, in spite of Padilla’s uncommon headgear, he had no recollection of him.

“Why did he become a radical? I really can’t say,” said Mustapher Olaniyan, 28, a computer network specialist.

“Maybe he was one of the guys who saw in the media how Muslims in Bosnia or Palestine were suffering and decided to do something about it. I think it’s stupid, but there are people who feel like that. Some people are predisposed to that.”