A Kurdish charity has been removed from the register of charities and its board disqualified from trusteeship after a Charity Commission investigation found it had links to a terrorist leader.
According to an inquiry report published today, the Commission began looking into the Didi Nwe Organisation, a Birmingham-based charity, in 2012 after the police found a trustee returning to the UK from France with £1,800 in cash. The Commission found that around £14,000 had been paid from the charity to the trustee. A statutory inquiry was opened in January 2013.
The Commission also found the charity’s website had made several references to Mullah Krekar, an alias of Najmuddin Faraj Ahmed, designated by the United Nations as a member of terrorist organisation Al Qaida, and the charity had uploaded videos of Mullah Krekar to YouTube.
The Commission found that the same trustee – who is not named in its report – had held a meeting, using the charity’s name, called “Free All Muslim Hostages” at which other terrorist sympathisers had spoken, and had spoken at those meetings himself.
The trustees said the money paid to its trustee was spent on running an online chatroom and visiting Kurdish hospital patients. The Commission found substantial payments to the chatroom from the trustee’s accounts, but was not fully satisfied with his explanations.
The Commission also found that Mullah Krekar had used to chatroom to communicate with followers.
“The inquiry found that the trustees failed to properly consider or manage the risks posed by the charity’s connections with and providing a platform to a designated person,” the report said. “The trustees knowingly supported activities that were in the commission’s view improper for the purpose of the charity.
“The inquiry found that the trustees were not acting in the best interests of the charity and their actions amount to misconduct and/or mismanagement on the part of the trustees in the administration of the charity.
On 6 July 2015 the Commission used its powers to remove all 3 individuals as trustees of the charity, and the charity was removed from the register on 17 August 2015.
“The consequence of removal is disqualification from being a trustee of any other charity without a waiver from disqualification from the commission or the courts,” the Commission said. “It is an offence to act as a trustee whilst disqualified.”
Related articles
