Iraqi immigrant not bitter after charges are dismissed

ST. LOUIS -- Iraqi immigrant Khalid Amen lost his job and the down payment for a semester at college following his arrest in a highly publicized government sting. Now, a month after the charges were dismissed, Amen hasn't lost his faith in the American way.

In December, the Justice Department announced an indictment of Amen and 11 others. They were accused of funneling $12 million illegally into Iraq.

Amen was arrested, taken to Seattle to face the charges and released on bond after a month in jail. The charges were dropped, Amen was let go as a part-time math teacher at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. He also lost the down payment he made for a semester at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Amen, in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said he did not blame the United States for its efforts to defend itself from terrorism. "Any country in this position would do the same thing," he said. "What happened on Sept. 11 changed the world."

But his lawyer, Neil Bruntrager, was more critical, noting that the defendants were Iraqi Shiites, the very people who have struggled to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

"Why would we target those people on the brink of war with Iraq? The only conclusion I can come to is ignorance," Bruntrager told the newspaper.

In Seattle, where the indictment was filed, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment, other than to note a June 12 news release announcing a guilty plea by the lead defendant, Hussein Alshafei, and the dismissal of the charges against Amen and four others.

Alshafei, who ran a Seattle-based business that promised to send money to Iraqi Shiites, admitted transferring $12 million to Iraq from 1998 through 2002, violating an executive order signed by President George Bush before the Persian Gulf War.

Charges also were dropped against Shiite defendants from Nashville, Dallas, Phoenix and Roanoke, Va.

In the end, there was little proof the money gathered actually went to Iraq, Bruntrager said.

"Money went overseas. There's no question about it. They can't show it went into Iraq," he said.

Bruntrager praised federal prosecutors in Seattle.

"Fortunately, they were not concerned with the political end of things," he said. "They were very professional."

He said Amen charged about a 1 percent fee on money he gathered to help families, or about $5,000 on the more than $500,000 he collected.

Amen said that helping families was his main goal, and that his fee went to covering expenses like sending faxes. "I didn't make a profit," he said.

Now, he and his wife, Fatima, are back in St. Louis, caring for their 2-month-old son. Amen is planning to resume work on his master's degree in computer science this fall.

Still, he said, he is haunted by the thought that some cataclysmic event like Sept. 11 could bring him more trouble.

"I feel a little worried in case something happens again, they will come after me. I'm just a little careful now," he said.