CAIR Official Sentenced
Charles Johnson
Thu Nov 13, 2003 at 9:35 pm PST • Views: 811
Bassem Khafagi, former community affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and founding member of the Islamic Assembly of North America, has been sentenced in his bank and visa fraud case after pleading guilty, and will be deported to Egypt: Former head of Islamic charity sentenced in fraud case.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff sentenced Bassem Khafagi, formerly of Ann Arbor, to 10 months of time already served in prison. Khafagi, 41, pleaded guilty Sept. 9.
Khafagi admitted during the September hearing that he passed bad checks at two banks for thousands of dollars in 2001, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins said in a statement.
Collins said Khafagi also “confessed … he made false material statements” on his nonimmigrant visa application on Nov. 8, 2000, in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
An immigration judge ordered Khafagi deported in August. He is expected to be deported soon to his native Egypt, where he is to join his wife and U.S.-born children, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Khafagi had been in custody since January, when he was arrested in a hotel near LaGuardia Airport in New York. At the time of his arrest, he was community affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group based in Washington.
The FBI said Khafagi is a founding member of the Ypsilanti-based Islamic Assembly of North America, a charity that purports to promote Islam. Officials said earlier this year that they were investigating the organization for possible links to terrorism.
Frank says: