USAID grantee NGO in Pakistan has hyperlinks with designated terrorist organizations Jamaat-e-Islami: What US lawmaker stated in a letter
An American lawmaker has alleged {that a} US-based NGO in Pakistan has hyperlinks with designated terrorist organizations. This NGO has been receiving monetary help from US Agency for International Development (USAID). In a letter dated January 24 to USAID administrator Samantha Power, Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee requested suspension of the USAID funding to the NGO pending a full and in-depth assessment of those accusations.
Reportedly, the in query nonprofit group, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), which relies in Michigan, is affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist terrorist group that operates in South Asia. USAID granted HHRD a grant of $110,000 in October 2021 to cowl the prices of delivery related to its humanitarian aid work.
“This award was made despite longstanding, detailed allegations that HHRD is connected to designated terrorist organizations, terror financiers, and extremist groups,” McCaul’s letter learn.
Moreover, McCaul said that the help company has failed to research the allegations towards the NGO in query or droop the grants made to it regardless of detailed data offered by congressional employees earlier.
In November 2019, three Members of Congress requested that the State Department assessment these alleged ties to terrorism in a public letter, McCaul wrote. McCaul urged Samantha Power to conduct a private and speedy assessment of the grants to HHRD and pause the grants till a full assessment is concluded.
“Please immediately personally review this grant to HHRD. I strongly urge you to pause this grant while you complete a thorough review of the allegations, to include coordination with the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, the State Department Counterterrorism Bureau, and the Department of Homeland Security,” McCaul added.
Reportedly, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), the charitable arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group answerable for the 2008 Mumbai assaults, is among the sponsors of HHRD occasions in Pakistan.
It is pertinent to notice that FIF has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States in 2016.
With reference to Pakistani media reviews that the NGO organized a convention in Pakistan with each FIF and the Milli Muslim League, two branches of Lashkar-e-Taiba which can be each designated as terrorist organizations by the US and the UN, a number of members of the US Congress, Jim Banks, Chuck Fleischmann, and Randy Weber wrote to the US State Department in 2019 asking for additional investigations into the HHRD.
Concerns concerning the HHRD’s relationship with Al-Khidmat, Jamaat-e-Islami’s official charitable group, had been additionally expressed in McCaul’s letter.
