J.M. Berger chronicles the history of CARE International, a Jihadi fundraising and recruiting network that operated in Boston throughout the ’90s (not to be confused with the humanitarian agency also called CARE):
Telling the IRS it was a non-political charity, CARE applied for and received a tax exemption, but its operations continued as before — supporting jihad overseas with money and men. Although it was heavily focused on the ongoing conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, its interests reached around the globe to anywhere mujahideen were fighting. As one associate of the group put it in a phone call recorded by the FBI, “As long as there is slaughtering, we’re with them. If there’s no slaughtering, there’s none, that’s it. Buzz off.”
In addition to hosting events at local mosques and universities, the group held fundraising “phonathons” and published a newsletter “stuffed with short, informative news items from various fronts in the global jihad,” mostly Bosnia. After 9/11 came the crackdown, which led to arrests of many core members on a variety of charges:
Some of the group’s other associates, linked to al Qaeda, were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. But many involved in CARE’s operations at various levels were never arrested. In some cases, people who were involved in supporting jihadist activity abroad came to realize after 9/11 that their often well-intentioned support had been used to support terrorism against civilians and against the United States, and stopped participating in the scene. Others were simply not implicated adequately to prosecute, although they may have played important roles. Not everyone involved with CARE went to jail, but the organization itself had shut down when the IRS and FBI began investigating it aggressively in 2003, and almost no one involved completely escaped scrutiny.
The Dish 