Canada strips NGO of charity status for suspected links to Hizbul Mujahideen

A few weeks before the United States declared Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin a global terrorist, two NGOs were quietly stripped of their charity statuses in Canada over suspicion that they had links to the terrorist group.

The two NGOs - ISNA (Islamic Society of Northern America) Islamic Services of Canada and the Canadian Islamic Trust Foundation - were former affiliates of the ISNA-Canada, a group that Canadian authorities began auditing in 2011.

According to a Global News report, which carries letters written by the Canada Revenue Agency to ISNA Islamic Services, from this week, Canadian authorities suspect that the NGO helped route funding from the country to a purported Pakistani charity whose armed wing is widely believed to be Hizbul Mujahideen.

Canadian authorities informed ISNA Islamic Services in March this year that they intended to revoke the NGO's charity status for "not complying" with the Canadian law and for failing to demonstrate that it used its funding for charitable purposes.

The Canada Revenue Agency further went on to say that they had been able to uncover links between ISNA Islamic Services and Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistan-based political group that is widely considered to be the parent organisation of the Hizbul Mujahideen.

The CRA found that the Jami Mosque in Toronto was involved in collecting funds for which it issued ISNA Islamic Services tax receipts. The funding was then routed to the Relief Organization of Kashmiri Muslims (ROKM), via the ISNA Development Foundation, which itself lost its charity status four years ago.

ROKM, the CRA said, is the charitable arm of Jamaat-e-Islami that "actively contests (sic) the legitimacy of India's governance over the state of Jammu and Kashmir."

"Our research indicates that ROKM is the charitable arm of Jamaat-e-Islami, a political organization that actively contests the legitimacy of India's governance over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, including reportedly through the activities of its armed wing Hizbul Mujahideen," the CRA reportedly said.

"Given the identified commonalities in directorship between ROKM and Jamaat-e-Islami and the Hizbul Mujahideen executive committee, concerns exist that the funds collected and disbursed as part of this relief fund may have been used to support the political efforts of Jamaat-e-Islami and/or its armed wing Hizbul Mujahideen," the CRA went on to say.

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Canada's action came around a few weeks before Hizbul Mujadhideen chief Syed Salahuddin was declared a global terrorist by the United States. The US move came a day before President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in Washington for their maiden meet.

Hizbul Mujadhideen was already a proscribed organisation in the US when the country took action against Salahuddin. The US move was welcomed by India.

Islamabad, on the other hand, criticised the move, calling it unjustified. "The US State Department's designation of Syed Salahuddin, the head of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group based in Pakistan, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist was unjustified," the Pakistan Foreign Office had said in a statement.

(With inputs from Geeta Mohan in New Delhi)

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