American and Saudi Arabian officials on Thursday said they were asking the United Nations to add four branches of an Islamic charity to the UN list of groups whose assets are to be blocked as part of the war on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
"By working together to take action today and calling on the United Nations to do the same, our two countries send a clear message: those who hide intentions of terror behind a veil of benevolence and charity will not escape justice from the international community," said US Treasury Secretary John Snow in a prepared statement.
By adding branches of the Saudi charity Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan to the US blocking list, American banks are required to check their records and freeze any assets they find belonging to those offices. Calling for the offices to be added to the UN list is meant to trigger a similar search globally.
The Saudi government ordered Al-Haramain to close all of its overseas branch offices in 2003, the US Treasury said, but "continued monitoring by the United States and Saudi Arabia" showed the offices or their officials either continued to operate or had made plans to get around the move.
Thursday's action was not the first time an Al-Haramain office has been on the US blacklist. In March 2002, the United States added Al-Haramain offices in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to its terror finance blacklist.