Hussain Alshafei escaped Saddams repression and landed in Edmonds to live the American dream. Now hes accused of illegally funneling money home. Was he merely helping fellow immigrants feed the families they left behind, or engaged in something more?
THE WORLD ON THE EDGE Town Hall forums, sponsored in part by Seattle Weekly,March 6, 12, 18, and 27, and April 11. Speak your mind, then hear the experts.
Seattleites wanted to look for possible terrorists in their midst in the face of war and Code Orange warnings, it would be little surprise if they landed upon the name Hussain Alshafei, an Iraqi native living in Edmonds. Alshafei owned a business that appeared to be transmitting funds from Iraqi immigrants living in the U.S. to family members back home, which is a violation of the federal government's embargo on sending money and goods to the land of Saddam Hussein. On Dec. 19, 2002, a multiagency task force created in the wake of 9/11 to combat terrorist financing, called Operation Green Quest, arrested Alshafei and five of his alleged associates around the country in connection with what U.S. Customs Service Commissioner Robert Bonner called "a sprawling illegal financial network" that "funneled millions of dollars to Iraq." Six more, living in foreign countries including Iraq and Jordan, were also indicted. Alshafei was charged with conspiracy and 34 counts of money laundering.
Customs authorities, who led the investigation, have not specifically charged Alshafei with financing terrorism. But the involvement of Operation Green Quest suggests the suspicion of terrorist ties, which customs says it is continuing to investigate. It has treated Alshafei accordingly. A swarm of customs agents stormed his house at 4:30 in the morning on the day of his arrest, waking him up. "They were screamingI thought it was a nightmare," Alshafei recalls, showing me marks on his door apparently from the agents' kicks. He says he was handcuffed for hours while the agents scoured his house, seizing papers and pictures. After his arrest, he was put in solitary confinement for nine days.
Having since been released on bond and put under house arrest, Alshafei maintains that all he has ever tried to do was to help his people, victims of Saddam's repressive regime who rely upon money from relatives in the U.S. for basic necessities. Now an American citizen, he would certainly seem to be an unlikely tool of Saddam. Like most Iraqis in the U.S., he came here as a refugee from the tyrant's persecution, which played a particularly heavy role in Alshafei's life. His father was executed, according to Alshafei, after which, he says, the body was fed to the dogs.
But in a world where the ridiculous has come true, Alshafei's story illuminates the government's challenge in walking the line between vigilance and paranoia as it hunts for terrorists. And it demonstrates the impact of that hunt on immigrant communities, which have borne the brunt of suspicion.
Alshafei's tale, which begins in an Iraqi center of opposition to Saddam and traverses the refugee camps of Saudi Arabia, also tells a lot about the politics of a country with which we may soon be at war. Alshafei, though, is not some archetypal Iraqi. He is a character of his own makinga victimized rebel turned extremely successful American entrepreneur. In 30 months, authorities say, he handled $28 million from a client base that crossed the country. He's also someone who enjoyed the good life and strayed from his Muslim roots, a figure who, for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism, incited resentment and controversy within his own community. And exactly what he was up to with his money-transmitting business is yet to be explained.
Alshafei (pronounced Al-SHAW-fay) lives in an upscale, two-story blue-gray house on a typical suburban cul-de-sac of new homes not far from some strip malls. When I arrive at his house unannounced one morning hoping for an interview, he comes to the door as if just out of bed, but doesn't hesitate to invite me in. He gestures for me to wait in a white-walled living room with a Persian-style rug and couches made of what looks like white leather. He returns in a few minutes after assembling himself in a gray sweat suit and sandals. He is a slightly plump 35-year-old with large eyes, tousled jet-black hair, and a voluble manner.
SUFFERING THE PERSECUTION OF SADDAM
As he leads me into his airy kitchen, I see that the popular Arabic channel al-Jazeera is on the large-screen Sony in the adjacent family room. "I have not talked with any media," Alshafei says, and as he speaks, he is scooping tea into a pot, settling in for a visit that will occupy almost five hours.
"They arrested our father, that's how our tragedy begins," he says in his accented and fluent English. As his story goes, they were living in Najaf, a large city in the south of Iraq that is a spiritual and cultural center of the Shias, who follow one branch of Islam and make up a majority of the country's population but have been locked out of power by the Sunni elite. Alshafei's father, a grocer with his own store, had a friendly relationship with the Shia spiritual leader Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, whom Saddam had gruesomely executed in 1980 by having nails driven through his head. The elder Alshafei, however, was motivated less by religion than a love of democracy, according to his son. He used his interactions with customers as an opportunity to agitate against Saddam.
