Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 28, 2004
By THOMAS KOROSEC
Houston Chronicle Dallas Bureau

DALLAS - The Holy Land Foundation and seven of its officers were charged Tuesday with funneling millions of dollars to Hamas, a terrorist group responsible for suicide bombings in Israel.

The Richardson-based charity, its president, chairman and five other men were named in a 42-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury here.

The indictment alleges Holy Land, once the nation's largest Muslim charity, sent at least $12.4 million to individuals and groups linked to Hamas after 1995, the year the United States designated it a terrorist group. After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush closed the charity by executive order in December 2001.

HOLY LAND INDICTMENTS

• Indicted: The Holy Land Foundation; its president, Shukri Abu-Baker; chairman Ghassan Elashi; executive director Haitham Maghawri; the group's original chairman, Mohammad El-Mezain; grants director Akram Mishal; top fund-raiser Mufid Abdulqader; and Abdulrahem Odeh, the group's New Jersey director.

• Charges: Conspiracy, providing support to a terrorist organization, money laundering and tax evasion.

• Amount: The government alleges the Holy Land Foundation sent more than $12.4 million to Hamas between 1995 and 2001. The U.S. designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1995.

Attorney General John Ashcroft addressed the indictments at a Washington news conference Tuesday.

"Today, a U.S.-based charity that claims to do good works is charged with funding the works of evil," he said.

''To those who exploit good hearts to secretly fund violence and murder, this prosecution sends a clear message: There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks."

Ashcroft called suicide bombings aimed at innocent civilians a Hamas "trademark" and noted that several Americans have been among its hundreds of victims.

In Damascus, Syria, a Hamas leader accused the Bush administration of using the case to help in the president's re-election.

''Hamas did not take any penny from the Holy Land Foundation," Moussa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas' political bureau, told The Associated Press. ''Hamas has its own means of funding and that is not connected with any institution in the West."

The indictment names the foundation along with its president, Shukri Abu-Baker; chairman Ghassan Elashi; executive director Haitham Maghawri; Holy Land's original chairman, Mohammad El-Mezain; grants director Akram Mishal; top fund-raiser Mufid Abdulqader; and Abdulrahem Odeh, the group's New Jersey director. The charges include conspiracy, providing financial and material support to a terrorist organization, money laundering and tax evasion.

Tim Evans, an attorney for Elashi and Abu-Baker, said he knew of "no credible real evidence that any of these people intended for any charity money to end up in the hands of Hamas terrorists."

"This investigation has been going on for 10 years and I don't see anything in the indictment that is new," Evans said. "It causes me to wonder why Attorney General Ashcroft himself conducted a national press conference on the second day of the Democratic convention."

Abu-Baker, Elashi and Abdulqader were arrested early Tuesday without incident at their homes in suburban Dallas, officials said. El-Mezain was arrested in San Diego and Odeh in Clifton, N.J. Maghawri and Mishal are not in the United States and are considered fugitives.

The indictment alleges that Holy Land, which was formed in 1988, paid for Hamas officials and radical sheiks to visit the United States on fund-raising trips.

"At many of the events, the speakers, including the defendant Mufid Abdulqader, performed skits and songs which advocated the destruction of the state of Israel and glorified the killing of Jewish people," the indictment states.

Holy Land leaders have long maintained that the group aided the legitimately needy, but the indictment said those claims were a mantle designed to hide its real mission.

The group chose to aid orphans and families whose relatives had died or were jailed to further Hamas' violent campaign, including suicide bombings, the government alleges.

At a meeting in Philadelphia in 1993, Abu-Baker discussed the need to give nominal amounts to non-Palestinian charities to conceal the groups motives, the government alleges.

"We give $100,000 to the Islamists and $5,000 to the others," the indictment quotes Abu-Baker as saying.

''In this manner, the defendants effectively rewarded past, and encouraged future suicide bombings and terrorist activities on behalf of Hamas," Ashcroft said.

The indictment was unsealed one day after Holy Land filed a complaint with the inspector general of the Justice Department, accusing the FBI of fabricating the evidence used to shut down Holy Land and freeze about $4 million in assets.

Federal courts have repeatedly rejected Holy Land's appeals to get its assets unfrozen, concluding that the government has sufficient evidence linking the charity to terrorism.

Holy Land had close ties to InfoCom Corp., a computer and Internet-hosting company with an office across the street from Holy Land that was raided a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

InfoCom and five of its employees, including Elashi, were convicted this month on charges of making illegal computer shipments to Libya and Syria, which were designated as state sponsors of terrorism. They are scheduled to be sentenced in October. They also face trial later this year on separate charges of funneling money to a relative who is a high-ranking Hamas official.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2705426