US authorities allege imam assisted radicals

U.S. authorities are seeking to revoke the citizenship of an imam in Oregon who they say tried to conceal past associations with radical Islamic groups.

Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman Kariye raised money, recruited fighters and provided training for insurgent groups battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Justice says in a complaint filed July 20 in U.S. District Court in Portland.
     
Government lawyers say Kariye for a time "dealt directly" with Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, the founders of al-Qaida, and he recruited sympathizers in the United States and Pakistan for an al-Qaida precursor known as Maktab Al-Khidamat.
     
Kariye is also accused of being a founding officer and director of the now-defunct Global Relief Foundation, which authorities say provided assistance to terror groups including al-Qaida and promoted radical jihad.
     
Federal authorities say Kariye failed to reveal those details in his application for citizenship, which was granted in 1998.
     
Attempts to reach Kariye through his Portland mosque and a former attorney were not immediately successful.
     
Born in Somalia, Kariye came to the United States on a student visa in 1982, according to the complaint.

Between 1985 and 1988, he traveled to Afghanistan, where he went to a jihadist training camp and fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets. He helped process foreign fighters arriving in Pakistan for travel to training camps, authorities say, working directly with bin Laden and Azzam. At some point, he was arrested for his involvement with the mujahedeen and spent four months in a Pakistani prison.
     
After returning to the United States in 1988, he applied for...