Enaam M. Arnaout (Kunya: Abu Mahmoud;[1] born 1962) is a Syrian American who pleaded guilty to using charitable donations to support fighters in Bosnia without informing the donors of this,[2] during his tenure as a director of the charity Benevolence International Foundation (which is now banned worldwide by the United Nations).
[4] In 1987, Arnaout participated in the Battle of Jaji, and was photographed alongside Osama bin Laden and quoted in the Arab News as saying the Soviet forces had destroyed the trees that the Mujahideen had hoped to use for fortifications.
[4] The government claimed that Enaam Arnaout, aided by Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, Mohammed Atef and Yaseen al-Iraqi, purchased AK-47s and mortar rounds from a Pashtun tribesman named Haji Ayoub in about 1990, and that these were subsequently delivered by truck to the Jawr and Jihad Wahl training camps.
During a sentencing hearing in August 2003, U.S. District Judge Suzanne Conlon told prosecutors they had "failed to connect the dots" and said there was no evidence that Arnaout "identified with or supported" terrorism.
[7] In 2010, Arnaout and "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh sued to lift restrictions on group prayer by Muslim inmates in the Communication Management Unit at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana.