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New York Times - July 17, 2007
As Muslim group goes on trial,
other charities watch warily
Neil MacFarquhar
The strained argument between the United States government and nonprofit groups over how to deal with charities suspected of supporting terrorism is expected to play out in federal court here with the trial of the largest Muslim charity in this country, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
[Jury selection in the trial began on Monday (July 16), and was expected to take most of the week.]
The government, in the lengthy indictment and other court documents, accuses the foundation of being an integral part of Hamas, which much of the West condemns as a terrorist organization. The prosecution maintains that the main officers of the Holy Land foundation started the organization to generate charitable donations from the United States that ultimately helped Hamas thrive.
The defense argues that the government, lacking proof, has simply conjured up a vast conspiracy by claiming that the foundation channeled money through public charity committees in the occupied territories that it knew Hamas controlled. The federal government, the defense says, has never designated these committees as terrorist organizations.
The defense is expected to liken a donation to the Holy Land foundation to one to a Roman Catholic charity in Northern Ireland that ends up helping poor Irish Republican Army sympathizers.
The case is being closely watched by a large number of charitable organizations, as well as Muslim-Americans, because its outcome might well help determine the line separating legitimate giving from the financing of banned organizations.
Critics of government policy say the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Treasury Department has gone too far in using often secret evidence to condemn charities. The process unfairly destroys them, the critics say, though not one American charity itself has been convicted of supporting terrorism since the practice started in 2001. Some individual officers have gone to jail.
These critics say that in its zeal to prosecute, the government has lost sight of the fact that the charities were delivering millions of dollars to the poor and to victims of disasters.
They also say that undermining charities on the basis of little or no public evidence tarnishes the United States' reputation among Muslims globally, effectively helping the very groups the policy is supposed to subvert. . .
For American Muslims, whose religion stipulates that they give 2.5 percent of their annual income to charity, the shuttering of so many of their organizations without a hearing smacks of discrimination.
The Holy Land foundation case has had a high profile since President Bush announced in 2001 that the charity was being closed.
In 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft heralded the 42-count indictment against the charity and seven of its senior officials as the fruit of the USA Patriot Act, saying, “There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks.”
The case is extremely complicated and has been delayed three times since first scheduled in October 2004. There have been extended legal battles over the terrorism designation itself, secret evidence, a decade of wiretaps and testimony from unidentified Israeli sources, and two efforts to seize the foundation’s assets as damages for deaths in Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories or in Israel.
The Holy Land foundation “was an integral part of the Hamas social structure,” the government’s trial brief says. The group, based in Richardson, Tex., received more than $57 million in donations, gifts and grants while it was operating from 1992 to 2001, the indictment states...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/us/17charity.html
The Dallas Morning News - July 16, 2007
Unindicted co-conspirators
The Holy Land Foundation prosecution’s list of unindicted co-conspirators runs to more than 10 pages with some 300 names, including some of the largest Muslim American organizations.
Typically, prosecutors identify a person or a group as an unindicted co-conspirator so that their statements, or those of people involved in the listed organizations, about the defendants can be used in court without them being considered hearsay, which is not permitted in trial.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, has become a target since it was included on a list of unindicted co-conspirators filed by the Holy Land prosecutors.
Other groups on government's co-conspirator's list is the nation's largest Muslim educational source, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust, the country's largest holding company of deeds to about 300 mosques, Islamic centers and schools in the U.S.
"They're implicating mainstream, moderate Muslim voices all over the country," said Khalil Meek, president of the Plano-based Muslim Legal Fund of America, which is helping pay for the Holy Land defendants' attorneys. "This is a politically driven crusade."
In March, a legal flap further fueled criticisms of prejudice by Muslims. Defense attorneys found that summaries of government wiretap transcripts detailing Holy Land officials' conversations falsely attributed anti-Jewish comments to Holy Land Foundation leaders.
"Even Jesus Christ had called the Jews and their high priests ... the sons of snakes and scorpions" reads one summary quotation, which is not in the transcript.
"This is beyond incompetence," said Lawrence Davidson, a professor of Middle Eastern history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.
"It's not a crime that's motivating this," said Dr. Davidson, who is Jewish. "They want to prevent the Muslim community from gaining influence."
Justice officials have said they're investigating how the transcript errors occurred.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-holylandsider_16met.ART.State.Edition1.4354bf8.html
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