NuDay, a Windham-based refugee-assistance organization which has worked with multiple local organizations, was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph N. Laplante to five years of probation and a $25,000 fine for export offenses, after having pleaded guilty to three counts of failure to file export information in September.

According to a press release from U.S. Attorney Jane E. Young of the District of New Hampshire, the Windham-basedNuDay made more than 100 shipments to Syria, despite sanctions and export restrictions, between 2018 and 2021. NuDay had the items shipped to Mersin, Turkey, where another company would ship them into Syria.

Young’s release states that U.S. Department of Commerce regulations require exporters, such as NuDay, to report true and accurate information about the items being exported, including the shipment’s description, end user and monetary value. However, in addition to falsely reporting that the shipments’ end destination was Turkey, not Syria, the organization deflated the value of the goods to be below the $2,500 reporting threshold.

As a condition of the plea, NuDay founder Nadia Alawa and her family members are no longer involved with the organization.

Local NuDay efforts

In 2020, when COVID forced the shutdown and liquidation of the Serendipity consignment store at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Peterborough, the church worked with NuDay, also known as NuDay Syria, to distribute the items.

“We were well aware that whatever we were sending at that time was going to Syrian refugees,” said Cindy Naudascher of Dublin, chair of the church’s outreach ministry.

When the church was collecting items for Ukrainian refugees in early 2022, it raised a truckload of items, which it delivered for NuDay to send to refugees who had made it to Poland.

Naudascher said she was surprised to hear the news about NuDay’s guilty plea and sentence.

“I can say nothing but good things about what they were doing,” she said.

While All Saints’ was collecting items in Peterborough, Diane Hoffman and Judy Ouellette of Jaffrey had been inspired to start their own effort. Marc Tieger helped organize the campaign, which began working with NuDay after the state Attorney General’s office informed the volunteers that they couldn’t receive or ship any more items unless they filled out the paperwork to become an official charitable trust or partner with an existing organization.

Tieger called the effort “very uplifting,” citing donations from people in and outside of Jaffrey, Franklin Pierce University’s involvement, Belletetes offering space in Monadnock Plaza to collect donations and Atlas Pyrotechnics offering a truck to take items to Derry for packaging and shipping to Ukranian refugees in Poland.

“It was a terrific, terrific community effort,” Tieger said. “We all felt great.”

Tieger said communication with NuDay was through Sonia Nousheen of donor services, and all went well.

“They were very responsive. Communication was very sound,” he said. “From our perspective, it was a very smooth operation. There were no snags. There were no red flags. It was very satisfying and productive.”

Nousheen could not be reached for comment.

Previous reporting from Ashley Saari and Rowan Wilson was used in this story.