By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) – A former U.S. congressman from Michigan was sentenced to a year in prison on Wednesday for accepting secret payments to try to help an Islamic charity get removed from a congressional watch list of relief agencies suspected of supporting terrorism.

Mark Deli Siljander, 60, a former three-term Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, pleaded guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of the now-defunct Islamic American Relief Agency.

As part of his plea deal, Siljander admitted he had lied to the FBI and prosecutors in denying he was hired by the Missouri-based charity, U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips of Kansas City said in a statement.

The agency, which Phillips said “secretly funneled more than a million dollars to Iraq” in violation of U.S. economic sanctions, was closed in 2004 after the U.S. Treasury Department designated it as a global terrorist organization.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-congressman-gets-over-links-defunct-islamic-charity-051102159.html