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AMP Report – February 2, 2007
Two men acquitted of conspiracy
to fund Hamas activities
A federal jury in Chicago on February 1, 2007 acquitted Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48, a former Howard University professor who lives in Springfield, and Muhammad Salah, 53, a former grocer from suburban Chicago, of charges that they were part of a long-running conspiracy to finance Hamas activities in Israel.
However, the two men were found guilty of lesser charges: Ashqar was convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal contempt for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury, while Salah was convicted of obstruction for providing false answers in a civil lawsuit.
Salah, a U.S. citizen, was accused of helping funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups in the West Bank and Gaza. He was captured by the Israelis with $100,000 in cash in 1993 and allegedly confessed to being a military commander in Hamas. Ashqar was alleged to have helped launder money and facilitate communications for Hamas.
Neither man denied that he helped move money for Palestinian causes. But both said what they did was aimed at helping the Palestinian people and not to promote terrorism. In addition, Salah said his confession was the result of torture by Israeli officials.
The prosecution of Ashqar and Salah was deemed so important to the Justice Department that the 2004 indictments were announced in a news conference by the then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.
In an unprecedented twist for a U.S. courtroom former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified on behalf of prosecutors in Chicago about an Israeli interrogation session with Salah that she witnessed in the early 1990s.
Salah and his attorney argued that much of the evidence against him, including a confession, should be disregarded because it was obtained under torture when he was in Israeli custody. Miller testified that she saw no evidence of mistreatment when she witnessed an interrogation of Salah and two Israeli interrogators also testified under aliases that Salah was treated well.
According to Washington Post, the jury verdict marks the latest defeat for the Justice Department in cases involving support for radical Palestinian groups. In reporting the acquittal of the two, Washington Post pointed out:
“The case provides the latest example of the serious difficulties faced by the Justice Department in its attempts to prosecute supporters of radical Palestinian organizations. In the Chicago case, prosecutors faced the additional challenge of trying to punish activities that occurred before Hamas was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 1995.”
Defense attorneys portrayed the men as freedom fighters, comparing them to Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The jury delivered the verdict amid heavy security in the courtroom after deliberating for 14 days.
"We've convicted them - it's hard to say that we're disappointed, " First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro said.
Bridgeview mosque cheers Salah verdict
"I have never feared we would lose the case. Ever. ... We don't fear anyone, under Allah," Salah told a gathering at the Bridgeview mosque. People in the Bridgeview community helped him to put food on the table while he was unemployed during the trial, Salah said.
Many at the mosque celebrated the news that he was found not guilty of the most serious charges of helping to fund terrorism. The verdict has a special meaning for members of the mosque because many people know the Salah family.
"It's a great day today for Arab Muslims and Palestinians all over the world," said Ghassan Abdallah, the vice president of the Mosque Foundation. "We are glad that the jury was able to see through these false facts and forced confessions and render justice. It's a happy day for us."
The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said: "We hope that the suffering of the Salah family is over. We also hope that the `terrorism' label be reserved in the future for those found guilty of that charge in an open and fair trail administered in a respected court of law," the group said.
Government should apologize to Salah
The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, a federation of over fifty Muslim organizations, greeted the jury's verdict in the case of Mohammed Salah with relief and urged the government to apologize to him.
“We applaud the jury for taking the difficult task of this case seriously and methodically, and providing a just ruling,” said Council Chairman Abdul Malik Mujahid, adding, “It’s clear that the jury was able to transcend the Islamophobic atmosphere that has been created by the current government's policies and the media , especially in the last five years.”
The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago is a federation of over fifty mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and organizations serving the 400,000 Muslims who call Chicago their home.
In a statement, CIOGC said that the government's persecution of Mr. Salah began by declaring this U.S citizen a terrorist through an executive order without any court of law finding him as such. This was soundly rejected by the jury today. Despite the use of Israeli torture, secret evidence and former Attorney General, John Ashcroft’s incitement in the press that Mr. Salah was running a “U.S.-based terrorist-recruiting and financing cell” Mr. Salah has been proven innocent of any connection to terrorism in the United States or abroad.
“The President, with whose signature Mr. Salah was declared a terrorist without any trial, owes Mr. Salah and his family an apology for making their lives miserable. Great injustice has already been done. Now, following the spirit of this verdict, the government needs to withdraw Mr. Salah’s designation as a terrorist and allow this family to put the pieces of their life back together instead of sending him to prison on lesser charges.”
“The Salah case is yet another example of the government publicly declaring war against terrorism by indicting innocent American Muslims, only to dismiss or drop these charges to lesser, minor crimes,” said Mujahid. The prestigious Social Science Research Council examined more than 300 prosecutions of individuals on terrorism-related charges, and found virtually none that were involved in a plot against America. It is about time that our country began debate about its growing level of Islamophobia.
History has shown that such heavy-handed government persecution of minorities, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and Jim Crow laws are ultimately counter-productive, unjust and eventually overturned. The Council reminds all Americans that in the war on terror, sacrificing innocent lives for the sake of appearances does not support democratic values.
MPAC expresses concern over foreign intelligence in American trials
In a statement on the jury acquittal of Muhammad Salah and Abdelhallen Ashqar, the Muslim Public Affairs Council expressed concern over foreign intelligence in American trials.
The MPAC statement, issued on Feb. 1, reads:
In a blow to the government's latest high profile terrorism case, a Chicago jury today acquitted two Muslim American men of racketeering charges related to money they sent to Palestinians. They were found guilty of lesser charges of obstructing justice. While the verdict represents yet another blow to the government's high-profile "war on terrorism" cases, it is also indicative of a troubling trend of foreign intelligence being admissable in domestic cases.
The trial of Muhammad Salah, a Chicago businessman, and Abdelhallen Ashqar, a Virginia professor, marked the first time an American court allowed the testimony of two Israeli security agents in a U.S. courtroom. Despite petitions filed by the Chicago Tribune and civil rights groups, Judge Amy St. Eve allowed the agents to testify in a closed hearing that amounted to secret evidence. (In the case of Salah, the prosecution sought to prove he provided aid to Hamas terror activities based on an admission obtained under torture in a foreign country and in a language the defendant does not understand.)
The Salah trial was the latest in a handful of post-9/11 high level terrorism cases which have included the use of foreign intelligence. Months before the Salah indictment was announced three years ago, the Holy Land Foundation was shut down amidst similar allegations of providing material support to Hamas terror activities. As detailed in a June 2006 Los Angeles Times report, "Israel's prominent investigative role appears to be unprecedented in post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases", including in the HLF over 8,000 pages of Israeli intelligence. And more recently, the terrorism trial of South Florida professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian also included Israeli intelligence prominently as evidence, but resulted in acquittal on eight of 17 charges and the jury deadlocked on the rest. In each of these cases, the use of Israeli evidence failed to convince American jurors.
Earlier this week, deportation proceedings against two Palestinian activists from a group coined the "the LA 8" -- Michel Shehadeh and Khader Hamide – were terminated two decades after they were targeted for having distributed magazines and raised humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and falsely accused of supporting terrorism. In his ruling, a Los Angeles immigration judge characterized the government's efforts not only as a violation of the men's Constitutional rights, but a "gross failure" and "an embarrassment to the rule of law".
Such events feed a growing perception within the Muslim American community of deliberate targeting against Palestinians and sympathizers of the Palestinian cause, where they are stripped of Constitutional guarantees even in the court of law. Gone unchecked, such a perception hinders the execution of an effective campaign against terrorism and extremism.
MPAC supports the assertion of Amnesty International, which said today that it "is deeply concerned that evidence likely obtained by the use of torture even entered the courtroom. The U.S. government's case against Salah was mainly based on statements he made while in Israeli custody 14 years ago when interrogation techniques that amount to torture were considered legal by the authorities... The jury's rejection of the confessions in this case will hopefully deter government prosecutors from trying to obtain convictions based on questionable evidence. From the cages of Guantanamo to a Chicago courtroom, the use of torture to persecute and prosecute is intolerable."
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