US has found their freedom merits defence.

"After more than 15 years of investigation and two trials, the Holy Land Foundation and five of its former organizers were found guilty of illegally funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Holy Land Foundation defendants found guilty on all counts
November 24th, 2008
    
The verdicts by a Dallas federal jury are a significant victory for the Justice Department, which streamlined its case after a mistrial last year and worked hard to carefully educate jurors on the complex evidence presented in the massive case.

Guilty verdicts were read on 108 separate charges.

The verdicts are a major triumph for the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush, whose efforts at fighting terrorism financing have been troubled. Two other similar high-profile prosecutions targeting supporters of Palestinian militants have ended in acquittals, deadlocked juries or convictions on lesser charges.

"Today's verdicts are important milestones in America's efforts against financiers of terrorism," Patrick Rowan, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a prepared statement.

"This prosecution demonstrates our resolve to ensure that humanitarian relief efforts are not used as a mechanism to disguise and enable support for terrorist groups."

Peter Margulies, a Roger Williams University law professor who studies terrorism financing cases, said, "The government showed in a streamlined case that where special assistance to the families of terrorists is concerned, cash is the moral equivalent of a car bomb."

The jury also said Holy Land should forfeit $12.4 million because of several money-laundering convictions in the case. Prosecutors said the government probably will end up with about $5 million in Holy Land money frozen by federal authorities in 2001.

Monday's verdicts capped the government's second attempt to convict the men and the now-defunct Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation itself. It took the jury eight days of deliberations to reach its decisions – less than half the time it took jurors to end up with an almost complete mistrial last year.

Defendants in the Holy Land Foundation case
"It's a sad day," said Mohammed Wafa Yaish, Holy Land's former accountant and a defense witness. "It looks like helping the needy Palestinians is a crime these days."

Defense attorneys declined to comment but are already discussing plans for appeals.

Prosecutor Jim Jacks called his nearly decade-long involvement in the case, gratifying.

"My kids were in junior high when we started this case. They're out of college now," he said. "We had a strong case last year. This year, we refined the case. ... We had the benefit of being able to talk to the jurors after that first trial."

Opening statements at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas began Sept. 22. Prosecutors used more than 500 pieces of evidence to prove five former charity organizers used Holy Land, once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., to funnel almost $60 million to the militant group.

Hamas was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1995, and the trial centered on the $12 million the government said Holy Land and supporters funneled to the group after that date. Prosecutors say Holy Land was formed about the same time as Hamas in the late 1980s and early on was designated as its chief financier in America.

The conspiracy, prosecutors alleged, was overseen by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egypt-based Islamist group that authorities say is the parent organization of Hamas.

Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent who is now an author and terrorism expert, said the "trial provides an invaluable forum for publicly showing the true agenda of the international Muslim Brotherhood and its organizations in the United States – the abolition of the United States government as we know it and support for a designated terrorist organization."

Defense attorneys argued that the foundation was a legitimate charity that helped distressed Palestinians under Israeli occupation. They accused the government of bending to Israeli pressure and of relying on evidence predating the 1995 designation.

"The community sentiment ... was that this was a political trial trying to achieve a government policy," said Mohamed Elibiary, president of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, a Muslim group based in Plano.

"Most sense that this isn't over," he said, adding that many in the Muslim community are still offended by the government's list of more than 300 unindicted co-conspirators, which includes Muslim leaders and groups in the U.S.

"That list implicates most of the Muslim community in a wider conspiracy," he said.

The FBI's investigation of Holy Land began in 1993 and the charity was shut down by the government in December 2001. The first trial ended in a hung jury in October 2007.

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Americas on the front foot.


"The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pro-Muslim lobby named as an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the largest terror-funding cases ever brought by the U.S. government, continues to operate even though it no longer exists as a corporate entity, according to a lawyer suing the organization.

As WND reported last night, CAIR officials were surprised at their 14th annual banquet in Washington when lawyer David Yerushalmi arranged for them publicly to be served with legal notice of a new lawsuit over a staff member accused of representing himself as a lawyer and improperly taking clients' money.

Yerushalmi represents four plaintiffs, two of whom are African-American Muslims, in the case that claims CAIR internal documents reveal hundreds of people were victimized in the fraud scheme.

Yerushalmi discussed the developments today with WND founder and editor Joseph Farah, who was at the microphone in G. Gordon Liddy's absence on Liddy's regular radio program.

"We have CAIR documents which demonstrate there are at least 30 other victim-clients who paid money and were victimized by CAIR," Yerushalmi said, "And hundreds of other victims who don't even know they were victims."

The lawyer suggested allegations of that kind could spell the beginning of the end for CAIR's operations.

"If we have our way it certainly is," Yerushalmi told Farah. He said organizations that are proven to have a record of criminal activities should not exist.

Then came the suggestion of further defiance of the law by CAIR.

"The organization is no longer a valid corporation," Yerushalmi revealed on the program. "The District of Columbia delisted it on Sept. 8, 2008."

He said the organization failed to file its paperwork to continue to exist.

"They are not allowed to be operating, according to the law," he said.

A spokesman for CAIR, contacted by WND for a comment, said, "Thank you and have a nice day," and hung up on the reporter.

The man who served CAIR the legal summons and complaint was Dave Gaubatz, a private researcher who  investigated the group for its connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and global jihad.

He described for WND what happened at CAIR's banquet:

JihadWatch.org director Robert Spencer, a longtime critic of CAIR, said the lawsuit "is an extraordinarily significant action."

"For years CAIR has used litigation as a weapon to silence and intimidate both its critics and anyone who has advocated measures to protect Americans against jihad terror. But the convictions of various of its former officials on jihad terror-related charges, as well as Islamic supremacist statements that have come to light from some of its spokesmen, have long suggested that CAIR is quite different from what all too many in the government and the mainstream media take it to be," Spencer told WND.

"This suit further suggests that they have not hesitated to use the same tactics they've used with non-Muslims against their fellow Muslims, and is an important step in exposing this unsavory organization for what it really is," he said.

Gaubatz personally served CAIR Director Nihad Awad at the banquet while Democratic North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw, a CAIR national board member, was addressing the festivities.

The federal civil complaint alleges criminal fraud and racketeering against CAIR, a self-described public interest civil rights law firm. The lawsuit also names CAIR's national leadership as individual defendants.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Morris Days, the "resident attorney" and "manager for civil rights" at the now defunct CAIR MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Va., was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for assistance and who had paid for CAIR legal services.

CAIR is accused of purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations and the media. When CAIR got irate calls from clients about Days' failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR is charged with fraudulently deceiving clients about Days' relationship to CAIR, concealing the fact that CAIR had fired him for criminal fraud.

"The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.," Yerushalmi said referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial. "But our investigation and this complaint makes clear that CAIR’s criminal activities know no bounds."

The named defendants are: the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR); Nihad Awad aka Nihad Hammad, who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed, who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya, who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; Khadijah Athman, who is the manager of the "civil rights" division of CAIR; and Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR. All were handed subpoenas this evening.


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Awad's and Dahduli's phone numbers are listed in a Muslim Brotherhood document seized by federal investigators revealing "important phone numbers" for the "Palestine Section" of the Brotherhood in America. The court exhibit shows Hamas fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook listed on the same page with Awad.


Omar Ahmad: U.S. prosecutors also named CAIR's founder and chairman emeritus as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Ahmad too was placed at the Philly meeting, FBI special agent Lara Burns testified at the trial. Prosecutors also designated him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee" in America. Ahmad, like his CAIR partner Awad, is ethnic-Palestinian.
(Though both Ahmad and Awad were senior leaders of IAP, the Hamas front, neither of their biographical sketches posted on CAIR's website mentions their IAP past.)



Nabil Sadoun: A current CAIR board member, Sadoun has served on the board of the United Association for Studies and Research, which investigators believe to be a key Hamas front in America. In fact, Sadoun co-founded UASR with Hamas leader Marzook. The Justice Department added UASR to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case.


Mohamed Nimer: CAIR's current research director also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S.
(Tellingly, CAIR neglects to mention Nimer's and Sadoun's roles in UASR in their bios.)

Rafeeq Jaber: A founding director of CAIR, Jaber was the long-time president of the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2002, a federal judge found that "the Islamic Association for Palestine has acted in support of Hamas." In his capacity as IAP chief, Jaber praised Hezbollah attacks on Israel. He also served on the board of a radical mosque in the Chicago area.


Rabith Hadid: The CAIR fund-raiser was a founder of the Global Relief Foundation, which after 9/11 was blacklisted by Treasury for financing al-Qaida and other terror groups. Its assets were frozen in December 2001. Hadid was arrested on terror-related charges and deported to Lebanon in 2003.


Siraj Wahhaj: A member of CAIR's board of advisers, Wahhaj was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The radical Brooklyn imam was close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and defended him during his trial.

He was also a featured speaker at tonight's dinner.

Randall "Ismail" Royer: The former CAIR communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator is serving 20 years in prison in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network, which he led while employed by CAIR at its Washington headquarters. The group trained to kill U.S. soldiers overseas, cased the FBI headquarters, and cheered the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Al-Qaida operative Ahmed Abu Ali, convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush, was among those who trained with Royer's Northern Virginia cell.


Bassam Khafagi: Another CAIR official, Khafagi was arrested in 2003 while serving as CAIR's director of community affairs. He pleaded guilty to charges of bank and visa fraud stemming from a federal counterterror probe of his leadership role in the Islamic Assembly of North America, which has supported al-Qaida and advocated suicide attacks on America. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison and deported to his native Egypt.



Ghassan Elashi: One of CAIR's founding directors, he was convicted in 2004 of illegally shipping high-tech goods to terror state Syria, and is serving 80 months in prison. He's also charged with providing material support to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation trial. He was chairman of the charity, which provided seed capital to CAIR. Elashi is related to Hamas leader Marzook.


Hamza Yusuf: The FBI investigated the CAIR board member after 9/11, because just two days before the attacks, he made an ominous prediction to a Muslim audience.
"This country is facing a terrible fate and the reason for that is because this country stands condemned," Yusuf warned. "It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."

CAIR, which receives financial backing from Saudi and Emirati royalty, denies charges that it has a secret agenda to Islamize America. But a Muslim Brotherhood document declassified in the Holy Land case reveals that CAIR's parent was among Muslim organizations enlisted in a secret plot to destroy the American system from within and eventually take over the country.

Written early last decade in Arabic, the manifesto lays bare the subversive role of CAIR's forerunner, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and other Muslim groups in America to carry out a "grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

CAIR's founder Ahmad, while claiming to be a moderate and patriotic American, last decade told a group of Muslims in Northern California that they are in America to help assert Islam's rule over the country.

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