The US released the first detailed claims of links between a big Islamic charity and the al-Qaeda organisation, alleging that the head of a Chicago-based foundation was a close associate and fundraiser for Osama bin Laden.

Federal agents arrested Enaam M. Arnaout, the Syrian-born executive-director of the Benevolence International Foundation, charging him with perjury for lying in court documents this year when he claimed that the charity had no links with international terrorist groups.

The government says Mr Arnaout had direct contacts with Mr bin Laden stretching back more than a decade, and also co-operated with al-Qaeda operatives who were trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons.

The decision to press criminal charges against Mr Arnaout has for the first time made public some of what the US government claims to have learned about the links between US-based Islamic charities and terrorist groups.

Washington has faced sharp criticism for shutting down several large Muslim charities and launching raids on other groups without releasing any evidence backing those actions.

Three of the charities - Benevolence International, Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation - filed lawsuits seeking release of assets seized by the US government.

While Washington has alleged that the Holy Land Foundation was the primary fundraiser for Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, it has also said that any direct evidence that the three charities were financing terrorism was based on classified intelligence that could not be divulged.

But yesterday the US Justice Department dropped that reticence, spelling out in detail the alleged links between Benevolence International, which raised $3.6m (£2.4m) in 2001, and al-Qaeda. The evidence is based on a series of unidentified witnesses, including former al-Qaeda members and terrorists currently in US custody, as well as on documents seized in the group's offices in Chicago and Bosnia.

Federal agents say Mr bin Laden used Benevolence International's 10 offices worldwide to transfer money to al Qaeda associates. Al-Qaeda members would withdraw funds that were purportedly sent to build schools or provide food for the poor from bank accounts held by the charity, providing a legitimate cover for the movement of funds.

The government also alleges that Mr Arnaout assisted several al-Qaeda operatives, including Mamdouh Salim, an Iraqi facing charges over bombing two US embassies in east Africa in 1998, and Mohamad Jamal Khalifa, Mr bin Laden's brother-in-law, who has been tied to terrorist plots in the Philippines.

Hijacker link to Saddam dropped

US investigators no longer believe suicide hijacker Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Europe last year, eliminating the only known link between President Saddam Hussein's regime and the September 11 terrorist attacks, AP reports from Washington.

American and Czech officials had believed the meetings between Atta and Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat widely believed to be an intelligence agent, took place in Prague in April 2001.

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