Calif. officials raid charter school linked to terrorist network

Church & State, Mar 2002

Law enforcement officials in California have raided an Islamic charter school suspected of having ties to a terrorist organization and carted off 60 computers and 100 boxes of documents.

The GateWay Academy, a so-called "public charter school," was shut down in January and is the focus of an ongoing investigation. State officials said they are looking into allegations of fraud and financial wrongdoing at the school, but anonymous sources told The Washington Times there may be more to the matter.

According to the newspaper, the school is suspected of being tied to a militant U.S.-based black Muslim group called the Muslims of America. That group is in turn believed to be tied to al-- Fuqra, a terrorist group linked to fire bombings and murders in the United States and Canada.

"We are not denying the Fuqra connection," Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for the California Attorney General's Office told the newspaper. "But that is not the focus of this. We are looking to allegations of financial fraud."

The GateWay Academy has received public funding since its founding two years ago. It is chartered by the Fresno Unified School District, although the school is located in a rural commune in the Sierra Nevada foothills, several hundred miles away. Officials with the California Justice Department are trying to account for $1.3 million in public funds that are missing.

"They had a $1.3 million deficit when their whole budget was $2.6 million," said Jill Marmolejo, a spokeswoman for the Fresno Unified School District. "An accounting was due Dec. 1, then we gave them an extension and they missed that. They just haven't been forthcoming. And the more we dug, the more we found."

The Washington Times reported that some of the missing money may have been funneled to Sheik Sayyid Mubarik Ali Gilani, founder of Muslims of America. Gilani has been arrested in Pakistan and charged with the kidnapping of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The Times reported that Gilani left the United States in 1993. He has since been living in Lahore, Pakistan. Before his arrest, he had released a videotape calling on American Muslims to form an international organization and train in guerrilla warfare.

The GateWay school has also been accused of teaching the Koran in class and failing to conduct criminal background checks on its employees, both violations of California's charter school law.