[WCUSP] seizure of Child Foundation's computers

[yvonne simmons]

This is the an article by Willamette Weekly about the Child Foundation I was talking about on the call. We often work with Gourdarz Eghtedari Who is a long time activist. In Peace Yvonne 
 
  ISSUE #34.37 • NEWS • NEWS STORY [CIVIL RIGHTS]
Mystery Raid
Federal seizure of local charity’s computers puts Iranian community on edge.

[July 23rd, 2008] A federal raid on a Middle Eastern charity in Portland last week has alarmed the city’s Iranian-Americans—a community already shaken by strained relations between America and their homeland. 

“I’m very worried, because I know that [the charity’s officials] have been really doing a great job in supporting kids that are in need,” says Goudarz Eghtedari, a local Iranian-American who’s a traffic engineer for the city of Vancouver. 

An Iranian-American couple formed the charity, Child Foundation, in 1994 to sponsor poor children in developing countries, mainly Iran. It’s since grown to include Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Indonesia and the United States, according to its website and staff, with $1.6 million in revenue in 2006. 

The foundation’s Portland headquarters was the scene of the raid on the morning of July 15 when federal agents confiscated all five employees’ computers. The raid at their office on the fifth floor of the Terminal Sales Building at 1220 SW Morrison St. was witnessed by Dave Lister, a small-business owner and former Portland City Council candidate who was in the building visiting another office. 

As first reported last week on WWire, Lister saw men in shirts that said “federal agent” hauling computers out of the office. 

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Portland have declined to comment. 

Hossein Salehi, office manager at Child Foundation, told WW he’s not sure which federal agency conducted the raid. Otherwise he declined to comment, as did Timothy Snider, Child Foundation’s attorney with Stoel Rives law firm in Portland. 

The agents seized the computers the day before the charity was planning to move to a new office on the same floor of the building, according to two foundation employees who declined to give their names. The move happened as planned, but without the computers. 

News of the raid stunned several in the local Iranian-American community, estimated at 5,000 to 10,000 people. 

Yet it’s no surprise the feds would suspect an Iranian charity, says Ahmad Mostafavi, host of the local cable show My Iran. The United States and Iran have been locked in a diplomatic standoff since President Bush declared Iran part of an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea in 2002. More recent blowups have arisen over Iran’s nuclear program and alleged support for the Iraq insurgency. 

“If an Iranian organization is collecting money and sending it to Iran, that is going to be of some concern for the United States,” says Mostafavi. “Any time you collect money and take it to other countries, there’s always a chance that it’s not really distributed in ways that they claim.”