Terrorism Accusations—Talal Chahine

The owner of the La Shish restaurant chain—and his wife—has been indicted on four counts each of tax evasion.^[1] According to the indictment against Talal Chahine and his wife, Elfat El Aouar, the two “maintained a double set of computerized books, records and balance reports, one actual and one altered.”^[2] The altered books allegedly “artificially reduced the amount of income in the form of cash that was actually received by the restaurants,” and Mr. Chahine allegedly instructed Mrs. El Aouar to “fail to deposit a substantial amount of cash receipts from the restaurants. Instead, [the defendants] had La Shish, Inc. employees convert millions of dollars into cashier’s checks and also change denomination size from smaller denominations into larger denominations,” which was allegedly done to facilitate the transportation of cash outside the United States to Lebanon.^[3] Mr. Chahine is allegedly in Lebanon, while Mrs. El Aouar is in Michigan.^[4]

This would be a fairly mundane case, except the government has raised the specter of terrorism by alleging that Mr. Chahine “has ‘connections at the highest levels of … Hizballah.’”^[5] These accusations arose as the government attempted to argue that Mrs. El Aouar should not be released on bond “because she is a flight risk.”^[6] According to the government’s arguments, Mr. Chahine and Mrs. El Aouar “attended a fund raiding event in Lebanon,” where the keynote speakers were Mr. Chahine and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah; Sheikh Fadlallah is a Specially Designated Terrorist “based upon his status as a leading ideological figure within Hizballah.^[7] Magistrate Judge Donald A. Sebeer, however, set Mrs. El Aouar’s bond at $100,000 unsecured, and ordered her to report to Pre-Trial Services as directed, to surrender her passports, to obtain to passport, to submit to Home Incarceration, to not travel by aircraft, and to conduct no international financial transactions.^[8]

There is also a possibility that Mrs. El Aouar could also be charged in a superseding indictment with making false statements because the government alleges in its request for pretrial detention that she falsely claimed at her arrest not to know the location of her passports or her children’s passports, while the government had allegedly tracked her international travel roughly a month earlier.^[9]

It is unclear whether the terrorism accusations are the real thrust of the government’s case against Mr. Chahine, but it certainly seems that the government is trying to compel him to return to the United States by prosecuting his wife, though she is allegedly complicit in the tax evasion scheme. There is no extradition treaty between Lebanon and the United States, and the two countries have somewhat strained relations at the moment. Therefore, to prosecute Mr. Chahine, he would likely have to return on his own accord, which he may not be willing to do.

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[1] Niraj Warikoo, La Shish Owner Tied to Terror, Prosecutors Say, Detroit Free Press, May 23, 2006.
[2] United States v. Chahine, No. 5:06-cr-20248, Indictment at 2, (E.D. Mich. 2006) (available through PACER).
[3] Id.
[4] Warikoo, supra note 1.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Chahine, supra note 2, Government’s Written Proffer in Support of its Request for Detention Pending Trial, at 7.
[8] Chahine, supra note 2, Order Setting Conditions of Release, at 2.
[9] Chahine, supra note 6. at 3.