US federal prosecutors said on Thursday they were moving to seize four mosques and a 36-story New York skyscraper from a non-profit Muslim group suspected of being under the Iranian government’s control.
The Alavi Foundation has been illegally funneling funds to the Iranian government, said the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara.
Bharara filed a civil complaint with a New York federal court to forfeit bank accounts owned by the group and a suspected front company, as well as the office tower, property in Virginia and Islamic centers in New York city and the states of Maryland, Texas and California.
A total of eight real estate properties and nine bank accounts were involved.
In a 97-page complaint, US prosecutors alleged that top Iranian officials, including former deputy prime minister Tahmasb Mazaheri and ambassadors to the UN, were involved in the foundation’s business dealings.
“The Alavi Foundation has effectively been a front for the government of Iran,” Bharara said in a statement.
The filing was likely to further Washington’s already fraught ties with Tehran, which it accuses of funding terror groups and of seeking to produce a nuclear bomb under cover of its suspect civilian nuclear program.
US President Barack Obama renewed long-standing US economic sanctions against Iran for another year on Thursday, telling Congress that “our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal.”
Calls to the Alavi Foundation and the Iranian mission to the UN were not immediately returned.
The move to seize the Shiite Muslim places of worship, a very rare step for US law enforcement because of freedom of religion rights enshrined in the Constitution, comes as US Muslims fear a backlash following last week’s shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, allegedly by a Muslim US Army psychiatrist.
The seized Islamic centers — the Islamic Institute of New York in the city’s Queens borough, the Islamic Education Center of Houston, Texas, the Islamic Education Center in Rockville, Maryland and the Qoba Foundation in Carmichael, California — house mosques and schools.
US officials were quick to stress that the complaint targeted specific properties, irrespective of what is built on them, and that the tenants and occupants remained free to use the sites.
“No action has been taken against any tenants or occupants of those properties,” Bharara spokeswoman Yusill Scribner said. “There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any of these tenants or occupants.”
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