Former Michigan congressman Mark Siljander (R) sentenced to year in federal prison [View all]

[Bozita]

Former Michigan congressman Mark Siljander sentenced to year in federal prison
Published: Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 8:00 PM Updated: Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 8:36 PM
By The Associated Press

KANSAS CITY — Former Southwest Michigan congressman Mark Siljander, accused of accepting stolen funds on behalf of a Missouri charity with alleged terrorism ties, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison.

Four co-defendants of Siljander, who served in Congress from 1981 until 1987, also were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Kansas City. Sentences ranged from probation to nearly five years in prison for Mubarak Hamed, the former executive director of the Columbia-based Islamic American Relief Agency.

Prosecutors said Hamed conspired to hire Siljander to lobby for the charity's removal from a government list of charities suspected of funding international terrorism. The charity closed in October 2004 after being designated a global terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

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Siljander, sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison, pleaded guilty to obstruction and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Prosecutors said Siljander received $75,000 from the charity to push for its removal from the list, and that $50,000 of it was part of unused grant money that was supposed to have been returned to the U.S. Agency for International Development after it terminated its grants for two relief projects in Mali, Africa, with the charity in 1999.

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http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/01/former_michigan_congressman_ma.html