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The Plain Dealer Cleveland – February 5, 2005
Cleveland mosque raided by FBI
Amanda Garrett and John Caniglia
The FBI on Thursday raided an accountant's West Park office in Cleveland, his home and a building containing both a mosque and an Islamic school, seizing records and computers in a money-laundering probe.
What's behind the investigation is unclear, but anti-terrorism prosecutors are handling the case. Officials declined to discuss details. And the target of the investigation - Abrar Haque - did not respond to several messages left at his business. His attorney, Mark DeVan, declined to comment.
Haque, 43, is a certified public accountant and financial planner who helped launch a small Lorain Avenue mosque 15 years ago. The Islamic Mosque, which has since moved into a former church on Rocky River Drive, was touched by a terror-financing probe three years ago.
In that case, the FBI uncovered a murder and arson plot designed to raise money for "the cause" in Afghanistan.
One of the men who pleaded guilty in that case - Saleh Nawash - was a spiritual leader of the Islamic Mosque. Nawash tried to hire a hit man to have his Lorain Avenue meat shop, Halal Products, torched so he could collect the insurance money and spend part of it financing "the cause" in Afghanistan, home base to al-Qaida and birthplace of various Islamic terror organizations.
Authorities, despite convicting Nawash and another man, never revealed what "the cause" is. And it's unclear whether this week's investigation is connected.
But a federal search of the building housing the Islamic Mosque and the School for Excellence - a charter school that operates in the basement of the mosque - was particularly troubling, local Muslims said.
People connected with the mosque said the congregation moved into a building on a poor stretch of Rocky River Drive hoping to revitalize the neighborhood.
Federal agents, they said, not only violated a sacred place but also seized school records that couldn't possibly have anything to do with a criminal investigation.
"What happens to one of our mosques happens to all of our mosques," said Isam Zaiem, chairman of the Cleveland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"Across this country, Muslims are one community, and they'll know about what happened to this mosque and they'll be concerned."
Shopkeepers along Lorain Avenue buzzed with gossip and speculation Friday about this week's raid of Abrar CPA Inc. If Haque was trying to hide something, they said, he picked the wrong neighborhood.
West Park is a tight-knit enclave of Cleveland police officers and their families. Keeping a secret here, let alone a criminal enterprise, is nearly impossible, some said.
From the time Abrar CPA moved in a few years ago, no one who worked or did business there tried to fit in, they said. They rarely spoke, even if greeted by neighbors of Arabic descent. Yet they would fight over parking in a lot that abutted the accounting business but did not belong to it.
Several shopkeepers said they knew a raid was coming because FBI agents began watching the business about a year ago. When authorities moved in Thursday, everyone watched.
Agents spent about six hours at Abrar CPA and filled two large U-Haul trucks with boxes of paperwork, neighbors said…..
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