{"id":2230,"date":"2008-01-17T03:24:06","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T03:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/former-us-congressman-indicted\/2230\/"},"modified":"2008-01-17T03:24:06","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T03:24:06","slug":"former-us-congressman-indicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/former-us-congressman-indicted\/","title":{"rendered":"Former US congressman indicted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana\" id=\"ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblBody\"><strong>An ex-congressman is indicted for his part in an alleged terrorist fundraising and accused of sending $130,000 to a Taliban supporter. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A US grand jury indicted ex-Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice.<\/p>\n<p>It is alleged he lobbied for a charity that sent funds to al-Qaeda and Taliban supporter Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.<\/p>\n<p>Siljander was a congressman from 1981-1987 and served one year as a US delegate to the United Nations.<\/p>\n<p>The 42-count grand jury indictment alleges Siljander lied about lobbying senators on behalf of the Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA).<\/p>\n<p>The indictment alleges the charity sent about $130,000 (\u00a366,000) in 2003 and 2004 to accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had access to.<\/p>\n<p>It says Siljander &#8220;engaged in money laundering and obstruction of a federal investigation in an effort to disguise IARA&#8217;s misuse of taxpayer money that the government had provided for humanitarian purposes&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has long been a thorn in the US side in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>The US justice department says he has &#8220;vowed to engage in a holy war against the United States and international troops&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.ir\/detail.aspx?id=39117&amp;sectionid=3510203\">JR\/RA<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An ex-congressman is indicted for his part in an alleged terrorist fundraising and accused of sending $130,000 to a Taliban supporter. A US grand jury indicted ex-Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice. It is alleged he lobbied for a charity that sent funds to al-Qaeda and Taliban [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[81,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-2230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-law","8":"tag-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}