March 16, 2011

Imams, Dons and RICO

By Richard Butrick

The RICO Act is an untapped tool that could be used to bring down jihadis, though it remains unused for that purpose. Despite some spectacular individual takedowns, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover made little dent in criminal organizations until the RICO Act of 1970. Hoover even denied the existence of organized crime for some 40 years prior to the RICO Act. Yet the Mafia, partly by courtesy of Mussolini's crackdown in Italy, began to be an organized force in the US by the thirties. Hoover, nonetheless, was content to make headlines going after individual operatives without going after the organization itself. There are some nasty explanations of Hoover being subject to blackmail by the Mafia which had proof of Hoover's homosexuality. Be that as it may, it wasn't until Bobby Kennedy and the RICO Act that the kingpin Dons of organized crime could no longer hide behind "legitimate" businesses.

Jeffrey E. Grell, an attorney with extensive experienced prosecuting and defending civil RICO claims since 1990 and author of Grell on RICO, puts it this way:

The government can criminally prosecute the Godfather under RICO and send him to jail even if the Godfather has never personally killed, extorted, bribed or engaged in any criminal behavior. The Godfather can be imprisoned because he operated and managed a criminal enterprise that engaged in such acts.

Grell further states:

Any person who operates or manages an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity may be in violation of the RICO Act. Any group may be a RICO enterprise regardless of whether its members wear pinstripes, poster boards, fatigues or hoods.

Okay, what does this have to do with imams? No, imams don't look like Mafia Dons, don't walk like Mafia Dons and certainly don't quack like Mafia Dons. But they do promote criminal activities for profit and they do hide behind legitimate "businesses." What profit? Turf and the jizya that comes with it. It is basically a protection racket. The radical imams preach that by Allah, the world should be their turf and all the non-muslims living on their turf have to pay a jizya (tribute) for the privilege of being second-class citizens (dhimmis). Now that just sounds a bit goofy. Sharia law? Can't happen here. Let the imams have their silly delusional preaching, Besides, they have 1^stAmendment rights to get on whatever soapbox they want. But the problem is their little soapboxes aren't so little and regularly hatch terrorists.

As a case in point consider the mosque in Falls Church, Virginia -- one of the largest Islamic centers in the eastern United States

1) The five Muslim-American men captured in Pakistan in December 2009 attempting to join up with a terrorist group were linked to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia.

2) Former Dar al-Hijrah Imam Anwar al-Awlaki is under a Presidential kill-or-capture order.

3) At least three of the 9/11 hijackers were protégés of Imam Awlaki

All of the above is FBI documented. But the natural question here seems to be that of how typical is the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque?

"It's the imams, stupid." It is not the Mosque but the imam.

The imams of the major mosques in the US are Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi trained indoctrinators. They hatch terrorists.

Islamophobic drivel? Islam bashing? Religious bigotry? Take your pick. If you are not being called an Islamophobe by an Islamodupe, you must be sitting down. Our current counterpart to Stalin's useful idiots will scream otherwise but the evidence is mounting and with the King investigation will hopefully no longer be blind-eyed by MSM (Ok. That may be quixotic).

If there is any truth to the maxim that the truth will out, it will be seen during the course of the King investigations that the Saudi sponsored imams brew the Petri dish for terrorism and jihadism in the US. The imams are the master propagandizers and recruiters of Islamism. Radical Islam (= orthodox Islam) is committed to subversion and criminal acts of intimidation, assassination and bombings to further their aim of world domination.

As was the case with the Mafia, it is the bosses behind the scenes, in this case the recruiters, the imams and their backers, that need to be targeted if homegrown terrorism is to be curtailed Grell states that RICO applies to masterminding criminal activity whether those involved wear, " pinstripes, poster boards, fatigues or hoods. ". To that should be added "turbans and beards".

Writing in the Columbia Law Review [Vol. 110:1123] Adam B. Weiss states that:

By virtue of its broad and expansive language, (RICO) can evolve to meet the challenges presented by the changing nature of the post-9/11 world, in which terrorist organizations have come to replace the Mafia as the foremost exemplar of "organized crime" in the American consciousness. This Note addresses the desirability and viability, in light of the "operation or management" test articulated by the Supreme Court in Reves v. Ernst & Young, of civil RICO suits by private plaintiffs against those who fund international terrorist organizations.

Unfortunately imams, for the most part, don't directly "operate or manage" or "fund" terrorist organizations. Under the "operate and manage" restrictive interpretation of RICO, Goebbels goes free.

To date RICO has never been used to indict imams. While imams are free to preach jihad against the Enlightenment and its kafirs, if they can be shown to be instrumental to radicalizing Muslims to join terrorist organizations and engage in terrorist acts it seems common sense they too should be indicted. Granted ‘instrumental' is the weasel word here, but lawyers should love it. Nonetheless, is it not common sense that a RICO indictment needs to brought against an imam operating out of a mosque like Dar al-Hijrah to test a case-based expansion of RICO to include recruiting for crime? The principle being that the recruiter who recruits for a criminal organization is just as complicit in the crimes of a criminal organization as the operators and managers of said organization. Are they not "aiding and abetting" criminal activity?

It won't happen under Holder.