Saudi crackdown on charities seen as incomplete

The approach was seen as a release valve for the most extreme religious strains inside Saudi Arabia. Al Haramain was one of the main conduits to the "Services Bureau" run by Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets, and which later evolved into Al Qaeda.

With violence rising inside Saudi Arabia now, US officials say that Riyadh is convinced it needs to change tack.

US and Saudi officials presented the decision as a major blow for the financing to Islamist terror groups like Al Qaeda, which have benefited over the years from the millions of dollars that flow through Saudi Arabia's vast, and largely unsupervised, international charity network.

Al Haramain offices and officials have had links to terror attacks on at least four continents, from the Bali nightclub bombings that killed some 200 people in 2002, to the 1998 attacks against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"I think the action ... was an important one. It was far-reaching. It indicates [Saudi] seriousness [in] dealing with the issue of terrorism finance," US Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters last week.

However, Lee Wolosky, a former director for transnational threats on the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, says that while shuttering Al Haramain is a "very significant step" there have been promises of Saudi reform in the past that weren't carried out.

"These issues are always matters of implementation,'' says Mr. Wolosky. "There's been very spotty enforcement in the past, some but not all of it attributable to officials in Riyadh."

Wolosky also says the full scope of the Saudi reforms isn't clear, and that if they don't include organizations like WAMY, they will have less bite.

"Question No. 1 is 'will all of these charities be folded into this new government entity,''' says Wolosky. "A lot of the likely suspects weren't mentioned in the press conference."

Another problem is that while Saudi Arabia's words have been tough, the country has yet to take tough action against key Al Haramain figures, particularly Aqeel, the organization's founder and chairman until late last year.

"Under Aqeel's leadership ... numerous [Al Haramain] field offices and representatives operating throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America appeared to be providing financial and material support to the Al Qaeda network," the US Treasury Department said in a press release last week.

Still, while Aqeel was removed from Al Haramain in late 2003, he hasn't been arrested in Saudi Arabia for his alleged terrorist ties, nor have Wael Julaidan or Yassin al-Qadi, two other Al Haramain leaders the US has put on its terrorism watch list.

Aqeel told two Arab-language newspapers last week that he intends to go to court in the US to protest the US allegations.

"I have helped the poor, the orphans, and widowed,'' he told Al-Hayat, a London-based paper. "These accusations are wrong and we will prove it."

While direct ties to terrorism are one thing, the US has also long worried about the intolerant brand of Islam that Saudi charities seek to export. The World Assembly of Moslem Youth, for instance, distributes and publishes books worldwide - some describing a vast Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and destroy Muslims.

"It's not just direct links to terrorism,'' says Abuza. "It's the infrastructure of terror that these groups put in place, creating mosques and scholarships that get people into an intolerant system," says Abuza.

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