Feds: La Shish owner has ties to terrorism

LA SHISH OWNER TIED TO TERROR, PROSECUTORS SAY
Subhead:	HIS LAWYER DENIES GOVERNMENT CLAIM
Byline/Affiliation:	By NIRAJ WARIKOO FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
	5/23/2006

According to federal prosecutors, the owner of the La Shish chain of restaurants has ties to top officials of a terrorist organization.

In documents filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, the U.S. Attorney’s Office maintains that Talal Chahine has “connections at the highest levels of … Hizballah,” a group based in Lebanon that the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

Chahine’s attorney, Robert Forrest, said that Chahine has never supported terrorism.

“He had nothing to do with people who are involved with that sort of activity,” Forrest said Monday.

The government’s claims were detailed in documents filed Friday to argue that Chahine’s wife, Elfat El Aouar, should not be released from jail because she is a flight risk. El Aouar, La Shish’s financial manager, and Chahine, 51, were charged last week with four counts of tax evasion related to their restaurant chain.

El Aouar, 39, was arrested at her Plymouth home Thursday and jailed. She was released Friday on a $100,000 unsecured bond on conditions that included that she surrender her passports and any airplane tickets, and not fly on a plane, said Stephen Moore, an official with the criminal investigative division of the Internal Revenue Office in Detroit.

According to prosecutors, El Aouar told an FBI agent in September that she was fully aware of all of Chahine’s activities.

In the court filing, the government says that in August 2002, El Aouar and Chahine attended a fund-raiser in Lebanon, at which Chahine and Hizballah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, were the keynote speakers.

Chahine and Fadlallah conferred privately, the government says. The government also says that Chahine sponsored orphans that may have been related to Hizballah activity and posed for photos in and around a Hizballah outpost in Lebanon.

Hizballah was suspected of some of the highest-profile terror attacks on U.S. interests in the 1980s, including suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon in the ’80s.

Chahine is currently in Lebanon, according to prosecutors. Forrest said he couldn’t comment on Chahine’s whereabouts.

Contact NIRAJ WARIKOO at 248-351-2998 or nwarikoo@freepress.com.

(SIDEBAR)

KEY LEGAL DATES FOR THE CHAHINE FAMILY

April 19, 2005:

Federal agents raid Talal Chahine’s homes and La Shish headquarters in Dearborn. They get computers and financial records, according to search warrant records.

May 13, 2005:

Khalil Chahine, 23, son of Talal Chahine, is sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison for the shooting death of his ex-girlfriend’s fiance, Paul Hallis.

Sept. 29, 2005:

Federal agents again raid Talal Chahine’s homes.

May 18, 2006:

Talal Chahine’s wife, Elfat El Aouar, is arrested at her home. She and her husband are each charged with four counts of tax evasion. She pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court. A warrant was issued for Chahine, who is in Lebanon, prosecutors say.

May 19, 2006:

El Aouar is released on bond.

SOURCE: Free Press research