09/16/2007

News / Closing set for Monday in Muslim charity's terror-financing trial

DALLAS—A federal court jury will begin deciding this week whether President Bush was correct when he declared that a Texas-based Muslim charity was an important cog in financing international terrorism.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to make closing arguments Monday in the trial of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its leaders on charges of aiding terrorists, conspiracy and money laundering.

Authorities say Holy Land funneled more than $12 million to Palestinian schools and charities controlled by the militant group Hamas after the U.S. government declared Hamas a terrorist group, which made supporting it illegal.

Defense lawyers say Holy Land only provided help to needy Palestinians.

The men could be sentenced to life in prison if they are convicted and if jurors believe that their actions resulted in deaths.

Testimony in the trial lasted nearly two months. On Thursday, Judge A. Joe Fish gave each side six hours for closing arguments and hinted the presentations could last more than two days. The jury could begin deliberations Wednesday.

The verdict may hinge on this: Will a jury of 12 ordinary Texans believe Hamas controlled Palestinian charities that got Holy Land money?

During the trial, a retired U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem testified the charities were not under Hamas control. A former Texas congressman who briefly represented Holy Land testified that he asked the FBI and State Department to warn him if any of the charities had terrorist ties, but he got no response.

The government's case relies heavily on thousands of pages of documents such as bank records and on video and audio tapes that showed some of the defendants meeting with Hamas members and supporters.

A letter sent to Shukri Abu Baker, Holy Land's chief executive, assessed whether leaders of the Palestinian charities were friend or foe.

At one charity, "We have nobody in it," but at another, "All of it is ours and it is guaranteed," the unknown author told Baker. An FBI agent said the latter reference meant that Hamas controlled the group.

But the letter, and much of the other evidence in the case, dated to the early 1990s or before. And a key witness who claimed the Palestinian charities were Hamas fronts was an Israeli official who was allowed to testify without being identified. He acknowledged that none of the groups appeared on U.S. government terrorist lists.

Prosecutors declined to call many of the people on their witness list, including Mohamed Shorbagi, a former Holy Land representative who pleaded guilty last year to supporting Hamas. He was supposed to testify about the relationship between Holy Land and Hamas, according to a court filing by prosecutors.

Tom Melsheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Dallas, said such insiders are invaluable in document-heavy cases, such as white-collar fraud cases.

"Normally in those cases, you have a witness or participant who can give some sense of what was going on when the documents were created," he said.

But, Melsheimer added, "There are hundreds of people in prison libraries today who have been convicted on documents."

Laurie L. Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and also a former federal prosecutor, believes Dallas prosecutors didn't want to expose Shorbagi to cross-examination by Holy Land's lawyers. A witness who looks untrustworthy on cross-examination can do more harm than good to the government's case, she said.

"The other side probably knows more about your witness than you do," Levenson said. "Documents are drier, but they are less risky. Witnesses are like a time bomb."

The Holy Land case has enraged leaders of some Muslim groups in the United States that were named unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to aid Hamas. They said the government made public an 11-page list of co-conspirators to frighten Muslims and prevent them from criticizing the case.

One of the unindicted co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asked the judge to strike it from the list. The group's president charged that prosecutors put the organization on the list to damage its reputation.

Prosecutors responded by telling the court that the council's "conspiratorial relationship" with Holy Land was confirmed by evidence from the trial. An FBI agent testified that two council leaders attended a 1993 meeting of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia and that one of them mediated a dispute over Hamas fundraising in the United States.

As of late last week, the judge had not ruled on the American-Islamic group's request.

Dennis M. Lormel, who started and led the FBI's terrorist financing operations section after 9-11 and is now a security consultant, called the Holy Land case extremely important for the government.

A government loss—after two other terror-financing trials ended in acquittals on the major charges—would bolster the argument that Holy Land leaders "were being singled out because of their Islamic background," Lormel said. He said convictions would vindicate the government's pursuit of the case.

Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States. In December 2001, President Bush appeared at a Rose Garden news conference to announce that its assets had been seized and said, "The net is closing" on those who finance terrorists.
By DAVID KOENIG Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 09/16/2007 08:37:24 AM MDT
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_6911496

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