The trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development assumes great importance because prosecutors have failed to get convictions on the main charges in two similar cases in the past.
In the first case, Sami Al-Arian, a University of Florida Professor and alleged executive of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was acquitted of eight charges and pleaded guilty to one as part of a deal to depart the U.S. voluntarily. The second case resulted in Muhammad Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar acquitted on racketeering conspiracy charges and convicted only of obstruction of justice.
Will a Texas Jury show more gumption? Read about it in Hamas Goes ‘on Trial’ in Texas in Case Over Muslim Charity. If you read to the end you will, of course, find the inevitable CAIR connection.
“This is Hamas on trial,” a longtime researcher into the American links of Middle Eastern terrorist groups, Steven Emerson, said yesterday. “I don’t think you can get a more significant material support case.”
The foundation, its chairman of the board, Ghassan Elashi, its secretary and CEO, Shukri Abu Baker, one of its top fund-raisers, Mufid Abdulqader, its director of endowments, Mohammed El-Mezain, and its New Jersey representative, Abdulraham Odeh, are charged with conspiring to aid a terrorist group, engaging in financial transactions with an embargoed group, money laundering, and other violations. Holy Land was shut down and had its assets frozen in 2001, but the criminal indictment was not returned until 2004.
In the Muslim community, many view the prosecution as driven by pro- Israel political forces and by a form of paranoia they call “Islamophobia.”
