Olajuwon mosque implicated in terror probe

Say it ain't so, Dream!

A mosque established and funded by basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon gave more than $80,000 to charities the government later determined to be fronts for the terror groups al-Qaida and Hamas, according to financial records obtained by The Associated Press. Olajuwon told the AP he had not known of any links to terrorism when the donations were made, prior to the government's crackdown on the groups, and would not have given the money if he had known.

But the agency and its possible ties to terrorism had been in news stories years earlier, before Olajuwon's contributions: --The U.S. Agency for International Development cut off two government grants to the Islamic African Relief Agency in 1999, saying funding the group "would not be in the national interest of the United States." --A former fund-raiser for the relief agency, Ziyad Khaleel, was named in a federal trial in 2001 as the man who bought a satellite telephone that bin Laden used to plan the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. --Numerous news organizations reported shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks that the relief agency was among more than two dozen Islamic charities under scrutiny for possible terrorist ties.

Say it ain't so.