Blessed Relief - 9/11 Ptech al-Kadi

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The US treasury said he founded the Muwafaq Foundation which it described as "an al-Qaida front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen. Blessed Relief is the English translation. Saudi businessmen have been transferring millions of dollars to Bin Laden through Blessed Relief". But from his office in Jeddah and through his prestigious London lawyers at Peter Carter Ruck, Mr Qadi has vehemently denied the charge, calling it "a gross violation of human rights". He told the Guardian yesterday he was very angry to have been put on the list without the US authorities giving him a chance to respond. "We have nothing to do with Bin Laden," he said. "We have nothing to hide. We are transparent and are ready to open our books even to the intelligence agencies." Muwafaq, he said, had been closed six years ago, though it is referred to in UN and German charity documents as doing work in the Sudan and Bosnia in 1997 and 1998. In a strongly worded letter to Sir Andrew Turnbull, the permanent secretary at the Treasury, Mr Carter-Ruck demanded that Mr Qadi's name be taken off the list pending "a proper investigation". The letter repeated his denials and asked for details of what information led to his name being included. "It is difficult to conceive at the present time of a more seriously damaging al legation to make," the letter said. The foundation was set up as a private company in the Isle of Man in 1991 with Mr Qadi as a director and one of four prominent shareholders. It then, allegedly, was registered in Jersey as a charity in 1992 and started relief work in Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Albania and Afghanistan. It opened a branches in Austria and Germany. Its status in Jersey remains a mystery. A chartered accountant in the capital, St Helier, told the Guardian she had been asked to act as a mailbox and the charity used her address. "For two years from 1992 I received nothing at all, so I stopped the contract," she said. "The trust deed was drawn up by an English lawyer but it wasn't followed through." Mr Qadi and the charity have been involved in several controversies. In 1995 Muwafaq's Islamabad office in Pakistan was raided by the police and its local director arrested due to suspicions of connections with Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York two years before.