How Two Al-Qaeda Fundraisers Were Set Free

What do you get for being a terrorist fundraiser? If you’re Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, then you grin after walking away with six months of home confinement. And if you’re, Samir Al-Monla, then you get off with eight months of home confinement.

The jury had convicted Muntasser and Al-Monla back in 2008 of conspiracy and of scheming to cover up their Islamic terrorism charity, but District Court Judge Dennis Saylor IV had thrown out the jury’s verdict. From there the case had gone to the United States Court of Appeals, which rejected Saylor’s willful disregard for the justice system and reinstated the jury’s verdict, and from there it bounced right back into Saylor’s court, where last week he gave the two men the expected slap on the wrist.

Muntasser and Al-Monla had co-founded their group, Care International, together with Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was Bin Laden’s mentor and a co-founder of Al-Qaeda and Hamas. Care International had been started up after the World Trade Center bombing as a successor to Al-Kifah, which operated under the aegis of Maktab al-Khidamat, founded by Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam as a precursor to Al-Qaeda. Al-Kifah had fed money to the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan and its operatives had been closely connected to the World Trade Center Bombing. Its assets were frozen after September 11, but those of Care International were not. (...)