Funding Charity or Terror?

The Richardson, Texas, Holy Land Foundation goes to trial today charged with funding terrorism. Specifically, charges are that the Foundation raised funds for Hamas, which used funds freed up by their donations to conduct terrorism, with the knowledge of Foundation officials.

Three months after 9/11, President Bush shut down Richardson's Holy Land Foundation, saying millions of dollars it sent to the Middle East helped "indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers."

Now the Justice Department must prove it.

On Monday, jury selection begins in Dallas in the nation's biggest terror-financing case yet: The federal government says that seven foundation organizers illegally sent at least $12 million overseas to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
(snip)
"At these events," the Dallas Holy Land indictment states, participants "praised Hamas through speeches, songs and violent dramatic skits depicting the killing of Jewish people."

But the government says the foundation's tactics changed around 1993. In February of that year, Islamic militants made their first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in New York.

And Hamas became incensed when, in late summer, Arab and Jewish representatives forged the historic Middle East agreement in Oslo, Norway, opening up the possibility of a peace that would allow for separate Jewish and Palestinian states. That set off what has become hundreds of Hamas suicide bombings over the years, targeting Israelis.

In October 1993, intelligence agents listened in on a groundbreaking meeting in Philadelphia between three Holy Land Foundation officials – all three defendants in this latest Dallas case – and Hamas contacts. The discussion centered on how to continue to raise money in America without attracting attention.
(snip)
"Critics can take their shots at the cases that have occurred, but in the end, the chilling effect that these prosecutions have had on these charities and the terrorists who want to use them is real," he said.

If prosecutors can convince jurors that death resulted from the defendants' support of Hamas, they could be sentenced to up to life in prison.

While so much that our government has done in the past six years has shown appalling stupidity and politically biased action, if there is a deterrent effect from the prosecution of Holy Land Foundation on actual terrorism, that would be worth all the trouble and expense of prosecution. I fear though that the effect will more likely be that of stirring up bad feelings among Muslims who see their charities' benefits being maligned. I would prefer it that that weren't the effect, but see no efforts by the cabal to build good relationships with the Middle East.

In addition, there were false transcripts produced in preparation for the trial.

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, but they declined to publicly comment about the Holy Land case.

The seriously damaged Department of Justice seems to be displaying the kind of prejudice that impairs its ability to maintain a Rule of Law.

Continuing threats against Iran are becoming as counterproductive as these persecutions of charities. No good is likely to come out of either method.

Holy Land Foundation Still Under the Gun

While the failure of the government to get a conviction against members of the Holy Land Foundation for supporting terrorism, the charity still is hamstrung. Under the Economic Suppression, oh, 'scuse me that's Control, the foundation will have all sorts of hoops to jump through if it ever is to continue doing good as it was intended.

LAST month, officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were carried out of a Dallas courthouse on the shoulders of jubilant friends and relatives after a federal jury largely vindicated them of charges of providing material support to the terrorist group Hamas.

The victory -- the jury acquitted or hung on all charges -- is in many ways a hollow one. Since December 2001, when the Holy Land Foundation was deemed a "specially designated global terrorist" by the Bush administration, the foundation's assets have been frozen by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control. The criminal case has no impact on the freeze. The legal and moral incongruity of the organization's situation highlights the problems inherent in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act -- a statute that was once used exclusively to penalize hostile foreign countries but that was expanded during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to target groups and individuals believed to be supporters of terrorist groups.

In a criminal procedure, such as the trial of the Holy Land officials, prosecutors must provide evidence, and defendants can challenge that evidence or present their own. Only if a jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt will the defendants be convicted and punished.

Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the process is turned on its head.

Of course, the judge in this case allowed agents of the Israeli secret service to testify without revealing their identities, so constitutional protections were forbidden to the defendants - as I have posted previously. The government has failed to sustain its charges in three cases to date, and in this case did not even bring the most serious charges, which were obviously unsustainable.

As commenter 1bernice comments at WaPo, Like the enabling resolution for a "war on terror," this so-called emergency economic powers act needs to be rescinded. Both give far, far too much power to a government run by ideologues to use the justice system and/or the military to punish those who disagree with them.

Indeed, this act gives many too many powers to a government that has proved it is inclined to use them through the 'justice' department to end disagreement with itself rather than to seek any justice. It is dangerous to let the abuse of our justice system go on.

Trial of Holy Land Foundation Breaks Ground in Secrecy

In the trial of Holy Land Foundation, formerly of Richardson, TX - just north of Dallas - groundbreaking limitations of the evidence through grounds of security has prevailed. A witness for the prosecution who is an agent of Israel was cloistered from view by all but immediate parties, and trial attenders sent into a separate room where they could not see the Israeli secret agent. This procedure will be repeated for a further Israeli secret service agent set to appear later in the trial. Defense moved for mistrial to be declared Monday, when their cross-examination of a U.S. FBI special agent was limited.

These precedent-setting methods are not promising for judicial proceedings. The Holy Land Foundation is being accused of sending funds for charitable purposes, which freed up Hamas to use more of its assets for terrorism.

Lawyers for Muslim charity leaders accused of aiding Middle East terrorists scored a rare win in court Tuesday when a federal judge blocked some evidence seized by Israeli soldiers during raids of Palestinian organizations.

The evidence included memos indicating that the governing Palestinian Authority believed the militant group Hamas controlled Muslim social agencies supported by the Texas charity, according to a court filing by prosecutors.

Defense lawyers had objected that some of the documents were not signed or dated, and they cast doubt on Israel's handling of the evidence.

Five former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development are charged with funneling millions of dollars to Hamas, which the U.S. government designated a terrorist organization in 1995. The trial is in its fourth week of testimony.

Federal District Judge A. Joe Fish has ruled in the prosecution's favor on a wide range of issues, from allowing the government to call Israeli secret agents as witnesses to denying defense requests for a mistrial.

On Tuesday, however, Fish ruled against prosecutors and blocked the jury from seeing 12 documents that prosecutors contended linked Hamas to charities called zakat committees that were funded partly by the Holy Land Foundation, or HLF.
(snip)
A lawyer for one of the men got an FBI agent to admit that the man's name did not appear on a list of Muslim Brotherhood activists or a Hamas official's phone book. Some of the other defendants' names did appear.

The defendants are charged with aiding a terrorist group, conspiracy and money laundering. The men could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty and if deaths resulted from their actions.

This trial has a lot of questionable elements, one being that the transcript of some taped conversations contained statements that were never made, (see earlier post "Funding Charity or Terror?")

As I noted at the time, results of this trial are most likely to include the conviction on the part of the Muslim community that it is the object of undisguised official discrimination. That new ground is being broken in sequestering witnesses who have official standing in another country, Israel, does not portend well for unbiased findings.

U.S. Terrorism Case: Low Expectations

Yesterday I spent many hours at the closing moments of the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, an exercise in the occupied White House trying to convince twelve jurors from Dallas that Holy Land Foundation was supporting terrorism. specific charges were brought against Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh and Mohammed El-Mezain. As posted previously, this is part of an ongoing effort by this government to prosecute charities for support of terrorism, and effort which has failed in previous cases filed.

I missed Monday, thankfully, a day in which the prosecution played about 3.5 hours of videotapes of undetermined date showing performances of dances and skits which protest against the Israeli occupation. Prosecutor Jonas made the statement, quoted by the Dallas Morning News report, that Holy Land Foundation was making widows and orphans rather than supporting them.

Throughout the trial, I have seen the prosecution equate terrorism - that America is supposed to fear, and use its resources to combat - with anti-Israel feelings. Defense witnesses have been brought in to elucidate the jury about the Middle East conflict and the prevalence of standard songs, dances and skits in festivals where nationalism is invoked for Palestine.

All of us are learning a great deal about the conditions in Palestine, where three quarters of the population live on less than $2 a day, and unemployment has reached 33%. In 1995 Hamas was designated a terrorist organization, and the Holy Land Foundation asked for guidance on how to support charitable activities in the Middle East without violating U.S. law. HLF made overtures to the Treasury and Department of State, and the Israeli government, to get solid guidelines. They got mixed messages, and little guidance.

We have also learned that in the predominantly Muslim Middle East, zakat committees carry out a lot of the charitable organization, representing the needy and delivering aid. The word zakat refers to one of the five pillars of Islam, and refers to the practice of giving 2.5% annually for the poor, which Muslims regard as basic religious observance.

A crucial contention of our government is that the donations to zakat committees from HLF constitute support of terrorism. The prosecution brought in unidentified Israeli agents, one of them an intelligence specialist "Avi" who insisted that the zakat committees are controlled by Hamas. As the defense pointed out in closing statements, this unknown quantity without credentials insisted that it was common knowledge that Hamas controls the zakat committees, that he was an expert who could "smell" out Hamas. The defense witness, former Consul General in Israel Abington, with documented credentials that include daily briefings from the U.S., dealt with zakat committees constantly during his several tenures representing the U.S. and was given free rein to do so from our government. He had been enjoined from ever dealing with Hamas.

One of the government's witnesses, McBrien, former official in the terrorism department of Treasury, was questioned about what organizations were part of the designated terrorist network, and what information should be relied on by charities to make sure that charitable donations wouldn't be confused with support of terrorism. He assured the jury that the list in existence wasn't to be taken as the only source, that any groups could be included and that the government didn't need to give specific names. Text he quoted from the Treasury Department documents sent to advise HLF that they were liable to charges of supporting terrorism if they supported listed groups with donations. One section, read aloud in court, stated that the listed groups were not the only ones that were involved, and the charity was responsible for terrorism support if they chose other, wrong, groups and the government thought they, too, were improper recipients.

As the defense established in cross-questioning in trial, and reiterated yesterday, the section that McBrien insisted made HLF responsible for its choice of certain zakat committees was inserted after HLF had disbanded, in 2001. The prosecution yesterday in closing, by attorney Jacks, countered that ... the jury should rely on its own memory. Stating that he had heard so many details from the defense that he'd "stopped trying to write it down", Jacks said he didn't believe much of the defense had ever been presented, and "if you don't recall, you're probably right". He continued to insist that just because the designation of Hamas as terrorist hadn't happened until after proven support by HLF, it was like saying that having dealt drugs for years was only illegal after the government declared it illegal.

I'm serious.

Jacks entered a prosecution wrap-up that condemned Hamas for interfering with the Oslo peace accord, and HLF members for expressing what was construed as hatred for the Israeli occupiers. He claimed that freedom of speech did not apply, as their speech showed a state of mind. The U.S., Jacks went on, wants peace in the world and that is our general nature. "Other countries use that to blame the U.S. and say 'that's why we're opposed to you'", said Jacks. I walked out shortly after he claimed that no one was better able to tell the jury about zakat committees than 'Avi' because as an Israeli security agent "that's his job."

The prosecution attorney told the twelve citizens chosen to represent the U.S. in deciding whether Muslim charity constitutes terrorist support, that juries of citizens decide matters like this all the time, and that defense reminders of the seriousness of the matter under consideration should be passed over.

Much of the evidence was gained by FISA wiretapping, which produced over almost ten years of 24 hours a day, mountains of tapes and transcripts. As the defense pointed out yesterday, from all that taxpayer supported effort the government introduced into evidence at trial some few skimpy pages that it insists support its case against those men it has charged with intentionally using the charity as a front to encourage and abet Hamas in terrorism.

It is impossible without making this unmanageable as a post to go into the amount of evidence I sat through, and I have definitely come out of the trial disgusted with the government case. The prosecution made its case to a jury yesterday that I felt had been insulted by them. The simple-minded claim that evidence presented by defense attorneys was just too much to register, that their memories should be relied on instead, reduces a jury to applause generators who vote for the Idol of the moment because they like a presentation best.

The government I saw in action yesterday is a disgrace, and proof positive that the Department of Justice has been badly damaged by the executive branch that has so besmirched this country's good name. If we can't be represented by dignified, intellectually capable, attorneys in a trial concerning terrorist activities, we are horribly betrayed.

*********************************************

Incidentally, the local coverage was this:

Defense attorneys stressed the charity's humanitarian work and lambasted the government's case as prejudiced.

What I heard was really something different, and went into great detail on the ways evidence worked against the government's case.

Another Thorn in the Crown

Another addition to the list of disgraces here, this morning. Dallas has amassed quite a record as the home of the assassination of President Kennedy, the home of the tv show that lauded greed and ruthlessness, the location of that church related SMU that overrode its church's laws to give a home to the papers of the worst president ever - papers that the public is denied access to - and now the home of the only successful verdict this occupied White House managed in prosecuting Muslim charity. This morning the city has a new thorn in its crown. An editorial in the local paper praises the verdict twelve members of this community reached in a trial that was always questionable.

The Dallas Morning News coverage that I read always gave the prosecution side of the trial that I attended. When I saw the paper's presentation of the events of the days I was there those events did not have the same character that I had witnessed as an observer. It's no wonder that the editorial's view was skewed.

The closing day particularly was memorable. Prosecution once again brought up the use of evidence in a Treasury Department document that had been put in after Hamas had been labelled terrorist by executive order. That evidence was an essential part of the prosecution case, and it established that other organizations than those named by the Treasury were to be treated as terrorist organizations. That notation appeared in a footnote in the instructions sent to Holy Land Foundation, but the version in which it appeared actually came out after the HLF had closed down in 2001.

The organizations that HLF contributed to are zakat committees. The prosecution called, and prosecuted them as, terrorist organizations. Never were they officially designated terrorist by our government. In his closing remarks, however, prosecutor Jacks insisted that he hadn't heard the defense prove its points, and that jurors should depend on their memories rather than evidence.

From my attendance at the trial, I felt that the whole case against Holy Land Foundation turned on the prosecution's insistence on facts that it did not prove, and that if the jury had considered evidence carefully as the previous, hung, jury had that there was no case against Holy Land Foundation.

The editorial finding showed me that editors, like the public, had been sadly misinformed.

Last week's guilty verdicts in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist fundraising trial were a welcome conclusion to a long and hard-fought case. As reporting earlier in this decade by this newspaper's Steve McGonigle showed, the Richardson-based Islamic charity, once the largest of its kind in the nation, secretly funneled money to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and sought to cover up the connection.

The government's victory over five leaders of the now-defunct HLF means real progress in shutting off the financial lifeline that sustains Mideast terrorists.
(snip)
“We have to look back as a community and reassess our moral compass,” Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and moderate Muslim leader, told us after the verdict.

Precisely. The government got the HLF defendants by clarifying its case. This should be a clarifying moment for others, too.

Odd that a prosecution wrapped up this 'clarified' case by contending the jury should ignore evidence. Prosecutor Jacks insisted that freedom of speech did not apply here, either, as it 'showed a state of mind'.

By his words, the paper that printed the opinion it had reached should have had no right to print that opinion either.

I would rather all the misinformation in the world be given me than that I be told the newspaper and American citizens can't express their state of mind. Mine is very downhearted this morning. I am free to tell you that because the U.S. Department of Justice has not prevailed over the constitution outside of the Federal courtroom where the HLF was tried, at least not so far.

Terrorism Charges Don't Hold Up But DOJ Won't Let Go

The mind-numbingly confused episode in District Judge Fish's courtroom that he declared a mistrial was worse than simply incoherence. In declaring a mistrial, the judge allows the charges to be brought again, and tried again, at huge public expense.

Charges brought are that the Holy Land Foundation was channeling money to Hamas. The proof included unnamed Israeli secret agents (the accused has the right to know who his accuser is in U.S. courts), bumperstickers and keychains with Hamas symbols found in offices where the Holy Land Foundation funds were directed, pre-1995 (when Hamas was declared a terrorist organization) donations to charitable Middle Eastern organizations (that fed the hungry and helped with living expenses and other such monstrous acts in addition to Hamas activities) - which did not convince the jury.

Hate acts similar to Anne Coulter's saying Jews need to be "perfected" seems to be the criminal standard in this trial. In its editorial deploring this acquital, the Dallas Morning News cites a video of one of the accused appearing in a skit that featured chanting "Death to Jews is precious". Not very nice, true enough. I don't like being told I'm a honky who persecutes non-white Americans, either, but when I hear "death to honkies" I guess I just don't see it as plotting a serious terrorist activity.

Going overboard is something I grew up with in a redneck home, and I've heard 'the only good nigger is a dead nigger' from people I owed respect. There are boundaries we all should stay within but don't always. Should I now be tried as a terrorist sympathizer for saying the charges brought by our government were overblown and simply wrong, and the prosecution should do something productive rather than blow them all up again?

The government is declaring it will bring those charges again, and try the case again, which is almost as much of a waste of time and money as the first few trials, all of them unsuccessful, in which our rightwing Justice Department now claims it has a victory in that it froze funds that otherwise would have freed up Hamas funds from its charitable works. Sorry, I'm not seeing the dancing in the streets because banks collected some extra interest on Holy Land Foundation Funds while Hamas used other funds to do its good works.

Dennis Lormel, who created the FBI's Terrorist Financing Operations Section and is now a terrorism consultant, said the collapse of the trial is a blow, but far from a death knell for similar cases.

"Obviously, it's a disappointment," he said. "But this should have no effect on the overall war on terror or terrorism financing. Regardless of the guilt or innocence, that charity was used to provide Hamas with funding. The government already won in this case, in that this charity's assets were frozen and that kept them from sending more money. At trial, your standard is different, and they didn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt."

Before retrying the case, prosecutors "need to ask jurors why they reached the decisions they did, and assess their performance," he said.

Counterterrorism expert Fred Burton, vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security at Austin-based Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, said it's best to view the prosecution as part of a disruption strategy. The verdict didn't come out as hoped, but "you have in essence tied this organization up in knots for a long time."

"Even though it may not be viewed as a success on the front page of the paper, behind the doors in Washington it will be," he said.

The failure to secure convictions on the most serious terrorism support charges comes on the heels of two high-stakes losses in other similar terrorism financing cases.

Earlier this year, an Illinois jury acquitted a Chicago-area businessman on charges that he and a co-defendant aided Palestinian terrorists. Two years earlier, a Florida professor also was found not guilty on similar terrorism-support charges, and the jury deadlocked on other charges. [Emphasis added.]

When this bunch of winger activist at "Justice" uses all the public funds it wants to to pursue an organization that has not been involved in direct terrorism, and probably not even indirect, but cuts off funds to actual homeland security activities like local police and community help, we need to be putting them on trial, not non-white charities. New Orleans is being left to rot, the law is broken so that fences can be thrown up in Arizona ((see Diane's post), but our funds are being thrown at ludicrous charges against the Holy Land Foundation.

Some 'perfecting' seems to be the least we can do about this wastrel bunch that chooses laws to ignore and tries to persuade the public it's got the goods on us terroristic sympathiser types.

Prosecution Got a Conviction in Holy Land FoundationTrial

The prosecution succeeded, and that is the only way I can lead off on this embarrassing report. A jury of twelve Dallas residents believed a prosecution that I also witnessed, and handed down a conviction on all counts - of Muslim charities being directly supportive of Hamas after that group was declared a terrorist operation. I cannot say the defendants, including the Holy Land Foundation itself, were found guilty.

As I have reported, the courtroom procedure included allowing witnesses to testify without being identified because they were Israeli agents, allowing hearsay testimony in addition to both testimony and redirect that ranged into the territory of phantasmagorical, and a prosecution wrap-up that told jurors that they should rely on their memories instead of testimony and evidence, and that freedom of speech wasn't allowed if that speech showed bad feelings. Demonstrations against Israeli occupation were the main focus of the U.S. prosecution.

There will be an appeal, and recent overturning of a similar case in which the prosecution was allowed tactics that also ran into the unconstitutional range makes the prospects somewhat promising.

As I have previously reported, the local reports often gave prosecution contentions without balancing defense arguments, so I will give the al Jazeera report which contains both sides.

A US court has convicted a Muslim charity and five of its former leaders of all 108 charges in the largest "terrorism" financing trial in US history.

The Texas jury reached its verdict on Monday after eight days of deliberations over whether the former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest US Muslim charity, had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas.

The charity, which was shut down seven years ago, was accused of giving more than $12m to support Hamas, which was designated a "terrorist organisation" in 1995 by the US government.

The hour-long verdict, following a seven-week trial, came after a first trial ended in October 2007 with one man acquitted on 31 charges but jurors unable to agree on verdicts for others.
(snip)
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Dallas, Texas, where the court case took place, said a former US state department official testified that he was never told that Hamas directed the US charity during intelligence briefings.

But an unidentified Israeli witness told the court that the aid was funnelled through Hamas channels.

Lydia Gonzalez of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the defendants did not get a fair trial.

"When you're supposed to be able to face your accusers fully and against secret evidence and secret witness, I think that leads to reasonable doubt."

Muslim groups say the prosecution has made American Muslims more hesitant to fulfil their religious obligation of helping the needy and the foundation's defenders accuse the government of selectively prosecuting the charity.

"The same charities that these guys gave to the American Red Cross is still giving to, the USAID is still giving to," Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.

The matters on trial in this courtroom were never about U.S. terrorism, but centered around Hamas activities against Israel. A major point the prosecution attempted to make was that zakat committees, which are the main instrument of administering charity in the Middle East, are controlled by Hamas, and therefore all charity benefited that group.

While I could definitely see that Hamas was shown resolutely not to accept Israeli occupation, I never saw any reason shown by prosecution that charitable operations in the U.S. conducted by Holy Land Foundation were a concern of the U.S. Department of Justice. That the Muslim religion demands charity and that zakat committees are the instrument of delivery appeared to be proven: that U.N., worldwide, and U.S. charitable efforts have and do deliver assistance through those means was proven as well.

Without going back over details minutely, I must say I saw no concern with justice in the courtroom that I observed; rather the efforts were concerned with making a connection between charity in the Middle East and terrorists. The aspects that I saw proven were familial and social relationships among the many groups, and that some members of the communities had Hamas connections. For the most part, the prosecution's constant attempt to blur a connection between the need for charity in occupied communities and hatred for Israel depended on very slim pickings of occasional statements of very bad feelings toward the occupiers. I was embarrassed for this country, and horrified that the jurors affirmed the prosecutors' feelings.

If all the millions spent on this mockery of a trial had gone into, say, actual charitable activities that showed the U.S. character as generous rather than undermining generosity, I would feel much more secure.

A Little Ignorance Goes a Long Way

Nice to see that the Dallas Morning News gave space to a sensible comment on the Holy Land Foundation case. Rational behavior and thought would so much improve this, and all, situation.

I look forward to a Justice Department that doesn't ignore the rights of other cultures than their own. I also look forward to blogs that feature posts of mine that do not get off on 'killing Jews', ick, I looked at some of the blogs that used my posts, and I really wish you were not into this hatred.

I think this post is worth your while, so will just put it up as it is.

In Blind Spot, the Secret History of American Counterterrorism, Timothy Naftali lays out our nation’s historical struggle against terrorism, from the rumored Nazi attempt on President Dwight Eisenhower’s life all the way up to 9/11.

Since the days of the Eisenhower Doctrine, the U.S. has played an “offshore balancer” role, supporting allied local regimes allied to our regional policy objectives. The regimes that opposed our way were categorized as “radical” or “rogue,” and we often supported their overthrow in a policy known as “regime change,” starting with Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 Iran through Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Also Online

Editorial: The Holy Land Foundation verdict

Beginning with Iran’s 1979 revolution, traditional Middle Eastern nation-states’ support for national liberation movements took a major leap forward as Iran started using socio-political movements to weaken and eventually subvert regional U.S. allies.

In 1993, new Clinton administration National Security Adviser Tony Lake, eager to address rising Middle Eastern challenges, believed that financing “was the softest part of the target” when trying to dismantle terrorist organizations. Because the United States enjoyed a huge competitive advantage in the banking industry, the choice seemed obvious to him. So Mr. Lake didn’t simply advocate for domestic privacy safeguards to be dismantled in the post-Nixon-era guidelines; he advocated covert operations where Washington would essentially seize funds from bank accounts it suspected of connections to designated terrorists.

That last policy was too much for the Treasury Department and was seen as potentially undermining confidence in the U.S. financial system, so it was dropped.

Mr. Lake’s persistent efforts propelled the Clinton administration to legislate what the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations agreed with but had never done — use secret evidence in politically decided immigration deportation cases and criminalize traditionally innocent activities such as charity if the government felt it provided “material support” to terrorist groups.

The 9/11 attacks simply advertised these policy debates, which had been going on among national security analysts for the past half-century, to the American people. In February 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated in Cairo that “for 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.”

We now know that the Holy Land Foundation was shut down by an executive order shortly after 9/11 without any new evidence against it that wasn’t already available to the previous administration, which simply authorized its surveillance.

Few North Texas Muslims will forget the misleading press conference by President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11, telling the American people that the HLF closure was a sign that the U.S. government was doing all it could to fight terrorism and, by extension, to keep another 9/11-style attack from harming the American people.

The 9/11 commission’s greatest failure undoubtedly has to be not helping the American people differentiate between our Middle Eastern foreign policy for the past half-century and its blowback — and the violent extremists of al-Qaeda aiming to target the average American for other reasons.

The U.S. government won a resounding court victory last Monday, convicting all the Palestinian HLF defendants on all “material support” charges leveled against them. Yet in the grand scheme of things, our government’s policy of denying our civil liberties and privacy at home while pursuing a cold war “containment” policy that often turns into a hot war for “regime change” has left thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands maimed, trillions of taxpayer dollars squandered and our homeland more vulnerable than ever.

A myopic view might wish to celebrate the HLF verdict, but the big picture clearly shows a continuing loss for America.

Mohamed Elibiary is president and CEO of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, a fellow at the USC-Georgetown University American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and a contributing expert to The Dallas Morning News’ Texas Faith blog. His e-mail address is me@freeandjust.org.

Sadly, the fear that makes so many Americans act against our own interests is too easily aroused when it concerns those we don't understand. Irresponsibility fostered by our government works against us at home and throughout the world.

Justice, the Department, Does Dallas

Yesterday I visited the trial of a Muslim charitable organization that is being accused of supporting terrorism. I went to the trial of the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas.

Thanks to a bit of chance, I met a member of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial defense team about a year and a half ago, and since I had been blogging on the trial, she invited me to come sit in on the actual action. Yesterday I did. It was pretty sad.

The government has brought charges against Muslim charities several times now for charitable support that has enabled terrorism. In 1995, Hamas was put on a list that classifies it as a terrorist organization, and since then any support of Hamas activities would constitute a crime. Financial support, from various Muslim charities, has not been shown to have occurred since the listing happened, but the charges persist. The Justice Department charges have been defeated in previous cases, but Dallas looks like the venue that finally is going to work for them.

As I had noted earlier in posts on the HLF trial, the judge in the previous trial here, which was declared a mistrial, allowed the government to use unidentified witnesses who were Israeli government agents. The fact that under our constitution the accused has the right to know who his/her accusers are just got swallowed up. That trial ended in acquittals for all but one of the accused, and a member of the jury who would not agree with the others on the remaining charges against one of them. The judge called for a retrial for all of the accused.

Yesterday I sat in on the actual hearing in the Federal Courthouse in Dallas, though observers were kept out of the courtroom to prevent identification of the agents who were used as witnesses against the defendants.. During the course of the morning, a small piece of paper was passed out cautioning members of the courtroom observers not to laugh, roll their eyes, chew gum, pray in the halls, talk and in other ways influence the jury.

Early on, one of the Israeli agents were testifying about materials the Israeli military picked up during raids on Muslim locations. The institutions included many kinds of operations, including schools and orphanages, and did turn up anti-Israeli materials which included documents of many types,posters, keychains and 'teachings'. During questioning, one agent denied that the operation he was part of, Operation Defense Shield, was part of Army security. That contradicted earlier testimony he had given, testimony that he had consulted with his attorney on at the time, in the earlier trial. Thank heavens I wasn't chewing any gum to distract that jury ... oh, well, we were not allowed in the courtroom in the morning, to keep the unidentified agents from revealing their identities.

In the afternoon I did get to the actual scene of the HLF trial, to hear a government witness who was being given special treatment after being found guilty of defrauding his employer. The defense questioning brought out that although Mr. Shorbagi had been convicted of crimes that could have had severe penalties, he had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison subject to possible shorter sentencing if he provided 'Substantial Assistance' to the government. He was trying really, really hard not to admit that he would like to get out of jail under Defense questioning about that possibility.

Mr. Shorbagi was not nearly so amazing for his fondness of his sentence as the government prosecution questioning. This witness had appeared the previous day, and had given testimony about the accused HLF participants' ties to Hamas. Normally, the 'redirect' which this questioning represented would have followed up on previous testimony.

Yesterday,the prosecution led his witness on a verbal adventure through realms of what Hamas and the entire Gaza community had thought and felt during the exile of more than 400 men from Gaza after an incident there.

The incident was one that the jury would easily connect with terrorism, an Israeli elimination by a well-aimed bomb of a prominent Gaza engineer who the witness identified with origination of suicide bombings. Subsequently a rocket was launched from Gaza, and several Israelis were killed. As a result of the rocket attack, about 70 homes were destroyed on Gaza's border with Israel, and more than 400 residents of the zone exiled into a refugee camp without any resources, in the winter. The HLF was one of many organizations that went to their assistance. The U.N. was one of those who helped.

During prosecution questioning, Mr. Shorbagi was allowed to testify that the Gaza community thought well of the dead engineer, that the refugees were aroused by their mistreatment, that Hamas was supportive of the engineer, and suicide bombings, praised "intifada", martyrdom - and other thoughts and feelings that no effort was made to establish this witness as qualified to speak on.

None of this area of questioning had been brought up before, it was on redirect questioning. So in addition to being new territory, the questioning was out of place because no previous indication or use had been established. For those of you not familiar with court procedure, 'hearsay' evidence is also precluded - evidence involving telling what some other party, not present in the court procedure, said, did or especially thought or believed. All objections to this entire episode were overruled, except for a few objections to 'leading the witness' - trying to prejudice his testimony in a particular direction.

Frankly, I was appalled. As our maladministration now occupying the White House has continually shown during the past eight years, the Justice Department has been infiltrated by politically motivated operatives who have undermined our judicial system. Yesterday I watched it in action. In its attempt to prove that terrorism is rife among Muslim charities, our government is ignoring basic justice, and basic principles that keep our system of law alive.

The Rule of Law is precious. It keeps us all safe, in addition to making our country one that gives access to every citizen to justice he/she can depend on. Under this Justice Department none of us is safe. When our courts are corrupt and maladminister their own laws no one can live securely.

In the Holy Land Foundation case, the government is using the excuse of fighting terrorism, but what I saw in court in Dallas yesterday was what terrorism could never accomplish, a breakdown of our country's laws.

I will go in again tomorrow, there is another episode I want to observe. This isn't easy to watch. I used to be really proud of my country, and I hope that I can be again, soon.

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I noted during the trial that the defense, the judge and some attendees are exhibiting a Us vs. Them attitude toward the defendants and members of the observing public who are obviously Muslim. I felt that a presence of more diverse types in the public might help alleviate that influence. If you're in the Dallas area, you might consider coming by sometimes. But don't cough, roll your eyes or pray in the hall!

War Criminals Declare Terrorism Retroactive

The element of bad timing increasingly is entering into this war criminal government's prosecutions of its designated terrorists. Yesterday guilty findings occurred in a trail of Jose Padilla - for activities during the Russian occupation of Chechnya. In case you don't immediately realize it, at that time present-day terrorists were our allies, and considered as such.

Defense attorneys said the defendants provided support to what they believed were legitimate charities aiding innocent Muslims "being slaughtered by the tens of thousands" in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo during the 1990s.

There were no discussions of violent acts in the 300,000 wiretapped conversations the government recorded on their telephones between 1993 and 2000, but Frazier mentioned al Qaeda 91 times during his argument, Jayyousi's lawyer, William Swor, said.

He characterized the government's case as "We can't make a case against the defendants so we're going to put al Qaeda on trial. We're going to say 'al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda."(Emphasis added.)

Today, the prosecution of Holy Land Foundation in Texas for its 'terrorist' fundings centers around its activities during - would you believe - the time before 911. This week, two Israeli secret agents were allowed to testify against the defendants without revealing their identities. As I pointed out Wednesday, that violates the right of the accused to know who is testifying against them. It also ignores that the testimony comes from agents who are sworn to destroy Hamas.

John Cline, attorney for former Holy Land board chairman Ghassan Elashi, got the Israeli Security Agency agent, who testified under a pseudonym for security reasons, to admit that he could not be sure who exactly was in charge of the Palestinian committees at the times Holy Land is alleged to have sent them millions of dollars.
(snip)
Throughout his questioning of the agent, Mr. Cline pointed out that none of the charity committees that the Holy Land defendants were charged with funding are listed on U.S. government designated terrorist lists.
(snip)
Joshua Dratel, attorney for Mohammad El-Mezain, got Avi to admit that he has never taken any college courses on Hamas, has published no articles (the ISA forbids its agents to publish, Avi said) and is not a professor. Avi also testified that he became an expert on the topic of Hamas charitable financing only in 2000 while helping the Israeli government prosecute an activist. (Emphasis added.)

No doubt in venues such as Texas and Florida, it is easier for the government to convince a jury that the people designated as terrorists were part and parcel of the group that flew into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. This kind of fuzzy thinking seems to be what the politically abusive Department of Justice is counting on to keep destroying our individual liberties, and jailing people who were Muslims before that time for intentions to kill us all. It's not convincing to rational people, like us DFH's, but we're not who the war criminals are counting on to continue with their damage to the Rule of Law.

Israeli secret agents are hardly the sort of witnesses that should be carrying out this government's intelligence - moreover, they show this executive branch's lack of intelligence. What is being done to these figures reeks of kangaroo trials, promotes torture, and is a mockery of the justice system this nation used to have. It is past time to throw out the Inquisition.

Fact Checking

Yesterday I spent many hours in the Federal Courtroom where the government is prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation, in a retrial, to show that it financed terrorism through its charitable activities. Testifying for the defense was Dr. John Esposito, who among his many achievements has produced a brief on terrorism that is used by our government and will be given to the incoming administration, and two of the six books that are given to the U.S. army's Iraqi officers before they are to be located there.

Dr. Esposito testified extensively about the nature of Islamic worship, giving a view of the religion that was a relief after the visits I have made to the courtroom where the attempt to make charitable activities appear sinister have been depressing. While here in the U.S. we have seen a lot of hate marketed as the nature of some religion, I still believe that most of us are more inclined to associate teachings of the various religions with humanity's desirable qualities. The attempts of our government to colorize Islamic worship as motivated by desire for world dominion hopefully are not succeeding with the twelve chosen to represent the U.S. public in this trial.

I won't go into a lot of detail, and recommend that if you want to more about Islam, Dr. Esposito's books are among many that are available to you. As you probably are aware, Christian, Jewish and Muslim teachings all include the basic call for charitable activity. Muslims are taught that charity, called zakat, constitutes one of the five essential practices of the Islamic faith.

As I have previously reported, the government has tried over the course of the two trials to convince the jury that the varied charitable activities of the Holy Land Foundation are direct financing of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Unnamed agents from Israeli anti-terrorism units have used materials they unearthed to convict the accused, implying that any threat against Israel is a threat against the U.S. The constant use of weighted terms - like holy war, suicide bombing, and those dread Arabic-sounding words jihad, mujahedin, and Shia law - has been rather transparently intended to provoke hostility, and anyone would expect that the jury is getting tired of it.

Occasionally a witness breaks through with a statement like that one by a convicted defense witness - that anyone who wants his donation to get to the needy will give it to Hamas, because the government will use it to build casinos.

Yesterday I felt a lifting of the dark pall of prejudice in the courtroom as an enlightened witness talked about facts, rather than implication. While I had been discouraged as the judge formerly appeared to side with the government prosecution, yesterday I watched the same judge showing a distinctly judicious manner. He even allowed testimony that put the defense in a good light to be sustained. I am hopeful.

Actual teachings of faith and/or patriotism may sometimes be perverted, as we all too well know. The Salem witch trials and McCarthy hearings are examples we went through in developing as a nation. The reaction to those events was a revulsion, and return to high ideals.

The dark side of politics has prevailed for eight years, and we can see that revulsion is the result throughout the country. I felt its weight lifting, and am hopeful of justice prevailing. The trial goes on,and these are interim reports, but facts are peeling away a lot of the murk it consisted of in my previous visits.

Another Vacation Piece

This is a post I wanted to repeat.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Prosecution Got a Conviction in Holy Land Foundation Trial
The prosecution succeeded, and that is the only way I can lead off on this embarrassing report. A jury of twelve Dallas residents believed a prosecution that I also witnessed, and handed down a conviction on all counts - of Muslim charities being directly supportive of Hamas after that group was declared a terrorist operation. I cannot say the defendants, including the Holy Land Foundation itself, were found guilty.

As I have reported, the courtroom procedure included allowing witnesses to testify without being identified because they were Israeli agents, allowing hearsay testimony in addition to both testimony and redirect that ranged into the territory of phantasmagorical, and a prosecution wrap-up that told jurors that they should rely on their memories instead of testimony and evidence, and that freedom of speech wasn't allowed if that speech showed bad feelings. Demonstrations against Israeli occupation were the main focus of the U.S. prosecution.

There will be an appeal, and recent overturning of a similar case in which the prosecution was allowed tactics that also ran into the unconstitutional range makes the prospects somewhat promising.

As I have previously reported, the local reports often gave prosecution contentions without balancing defense arguments, so I will give the al Jazeera report which contains both sides.

There is more of course, at the original post.

Dirtball Tactics in GWoT

The occupied Department of Justice is running up an impressive record in its struggles to find a victim in the GWoT. It has failed abysmally several times.

The prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation in Richardson, TX, evidently pulled a very shady trick on the accused, and tried to persuade jurors in their deliberations by sending into the jury room inadmissible evidence.

Last week, the defense asked Judge Solis to hold a hearing "for the purpose of probing the prosecutors' motives and obtaining other testimony relevant to the issues" in reference to the extra materials in the jury room.

During two months of testimony last year, jurors saw nearly all of the materials in question, including charts, documents, photographs and videos. U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish, now in semiretirement, told jurors to consider them only as aids in navigating the mountain of evidence in the complex case, and not as established fact.
(snip)
The defense team discovered that the materials had made it into the jury room while debriefing jurors after the tumultuous Oct. 22 mistrial, in which jurors could not all agree on the verdicts.

The problem was alluded to on the fourth day of deliberations. On Sept. 26, the forewoman sent out a note saying that one juror thought some demonstrative exhibits were in the jury room. Prosecutors told the judge that was not the case, prompting the judge to send back a note telling jurors that everything in the room with them was evidence and to keep deliberating.

"This gave considerable ammunition to the jurors favoring conviction who said that these exhibits proved that the defendants were guilty," the forewoman told attorneys, according to an affidavit filed May 30 with the dismissal motion. (Emphasis added.)

The jury was told to regard as evidence those materials which had been excluded because they were not true. The judge let the prosecutors' advertisements be used as evidence, much like the recently excluded exhibits a Federal Judge refused to accept with respect to Gitmo defendants, no more than saying something was true because the government said it was true three times, the Hare-brained, I mean Lewis Carroll, case.

This trial has been farcical from the beginning, trying to show that assistance given some Muslim charities, before they were declared to be terrorist organizations, made the Holy Land Foundation a terrorist operation. This country, and most particularly its Department of Justice, should engage in the pursuit of justice, not obstruction of it.

This is a sorry executive branch, and it only furthers terrorism.

Negative Party

Yesterday I spent many hours watching the Justice Department prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation. It comes at a time when the power of hate is waning visibly, and the coming election is giving everyone hope for empowerment of those middle class working citizens who have been subjected to discrimination, and outright robbery, for eight years. It seems like a blast from the past to sit in Dallas Federal Court listening to an FBI agent and a Treasury Department terrorism agent talk about charity to Muslims who live in the Middle East as if it constitutes a threat to our security.

Monday I listened to a prisoner seeking government leniency testify that Gaza residents were all sympathetic to suicide bombing, even while pointing out that he himself knew giving to Hamas means that the donations reach the needy but giving to Fatah means the casinos grow bigger. The court allowed the prisoner, under redirect, to testify to new thoughts regarding feelings and beliefs of those not on trial, despite court rules against new territory on redirect and against such 'hearsay' testimony. The courtroom was a little more orderly in procedures yesterday, as the witnesses and testimony seemed not quite so strained to produce.

I won't go on at great length in this post, as I want to make a larger observation at a later date. However, it was amusing during the lengthy questioning of FBI agent Laura Burns yesterday, that over and over she responded to defense questions about records of donations going to orphans that 'that's what it says'. When questioned about records of donations going to other entities, she usually answered 'correct' and 'yes'. The defense attorney even asked if it mattered to her, that donations from the Holy Land Foundation were given to orphans. She insisted that she only cared about relevance to HLF ties to Hamas. Her responses, sadly, belied that testimony over the course of the afternoon.

The government case against HLF forms a last ditch attempt to discourage Muslim charity. That is every bit as disreputable as it sounds.

Tempest In A Crock Pot

File this post under "Howler." I don't remember the last time I laughed loudly enough to scare my cats under the bed. Here's the skinny:

Campbell Soup Co., the Camden, N.J., food giant, has been fighting a grass-roots boycott of its products after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as halal, meaning they're prepared according to Islamic dietary laws. ...

The halal soups, designated with a special label, are available only in Canada. The company has no plans to offer a similar line in the United States, said John Faulkner, a company spokesman.

That boycott is being led by Pam Geller, the libertoonian blogger at Atlas Shrugs. (I could have posted a link, but I really didn't think it worth the effort.) She claims to object not to the halal designation but rather to Campbell's use of the halal certifying group ISNA, a group she claims is linked to Hamas, the Holy Land Foundation, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

ISNA has denied any ties to Hamas or to officials of a defunct charity called Holy Land Foundation, who were convicted in the conspiracy case. It has specifically condemned religious extremism and violence. In the wake of the conspiracy trial, Jewish and Protestant organizations issued statements in support of ISNA. ...

Boycotting a company is, in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate political action, one that I have participated in several times in my life time. Generally, however, boycotts are based on facts about the company that justify the action, something of which Ms. Geller is apparently unaware if in fact she really only has it in for ISNA as a terrorist-supporting organization. Whether her motives are pure or not, however, her followers appear to have joyfully leaped into rank Islamaphobia.

Here's the kicker, however, the punchline, if you will:

Faulkner said Campbell hasn't noticed any effect on its sales since the boycott began.

Heckuva job, Pammy.

DoJ Prosecutors: Big Families Make Palestine Poor

That headline is not as amazing as sitting in court yesterday with many who are associated with charities that include Palestinian needs and hearing our government telling former Consul General in Israel, Edward Abington, that big families are causing poverty in Palestine. "Four mouths are a lot easier to feed than eight," instructed prosecutor Jim Jacks. To his great credit, Mr. Abington fired back that unemployment was the greatest cause of poverty there, and that having no job made it hard to feed any number of mouths.

The defense rested yesterday, after Mr. Abington wound up with testimony to the effect that the zakat committees that our government has demonized as just another form of the terrorists. He was yet another witness pointing out that the government's case confuses members of charity operations of the Muslim religion with the radicals who do provide services they need to a desperately deprived region. Once again, the drastic interpretation of giving to the needy as supporting terrorism was discredited.

Defense attorneys representing five charity workers accused of using the formerly Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas rested their case on a high note Thursday.

The defense finished its weeklong case Thursday with its fifth and most powerful witness, Edward Abington, the former United States consul general in Israel who also later served as the State Department's No. 2 intelligence officer.

He told jurors that while serving as chief U.S. envoy to the Palestinian Authority from 1993 to 1997, he was never told in any of his daily government briefings that the terrorist group Hamas controlled a series of Palestinian charity groups.

The government contends those Palestinian charity groups, called zakat committees, were staffed by Hamas militants when Holy Land sent them more than $12 million after 1995, the year the U.S. designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The reporter for Dallas Morning News then went on to say that Mr. Abington had little or no knowledge of those serving on the zakat committees.

In addition, Mr. Abington was quite plainspoken, that while he had visited zakat committees, and reported his findings to the U.S. government, in all the regions he supervised, fifteen years had passed and he no longer remembered individual names of the very numerous committee members.

It was also reported that 'much of the money' going to charitable objects that the government identified as Hamas was raised 'at radical Islamist and anti-Semitic fundraisers'. While I was not there for every day of the trial, I had the impression that the government used videos of demonstrations of a radical and occasionally anti-Semitic nature to inflame jury sentiments. I never heard, nor can I envision, characterizing those events as the major source of funds in a religion that has one of its five pillars the the giving of 2.5% of income per annum to charitable efforts. Perhaps I overestimate the rational quotient that the government prosecution utilized in arguments. While rabble-rousing is essential to some fringe elements of the religious community here, charity is engrained in Muslim practice.

Mr. Abington pointed out that daily briefings did not ever point to any Hamas domination of zakat committees, while the government insisted that his intelligence never actually denied that the zakat committees were free from Hamas control.

The reporter did mention that Mr. Abington made the point that there is a difference between having Hamas members serving on the committee and "outright controlling them".

It is sad, but typical of the past eight years that a jury of twelve citizens has the responsibility of saving this country from committing a grave mistake. This is the only prosecution left in which our government is seeking to condemn charitable activity because some of its recipients are connected with Hamas.

Good wishes to the defense in making the points it will need to bring the twelve jurors into understanding of the mistake they are being asked to commit.

When we have prosecutors who are trying to accuse charitable organizations of viciousness, and accusing a population under seige of making their own situation desperate by accumulating too many people under one roof, we can be very thankful that this bunch will exit soon and leave only a bad smell. Well, that bad smell may take a few years to clear out of the halls of justice.

The failure to have any feeling for or understanding of the real world is a hallmark of this case, and reflects the same bubble mentality that prevails in the occupied White House.

While it is true that nothing much has come of the Fitzgerald investigation into White House involvement in revealing what are supposed to be State secrets, the identity of a covert agent, I am still expecting something to come of it. We hear that Rove won't be indicted, but the special investigator isn't the source of that information.

Today, a small event gave another ripple spreading across the pond.

The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation of a terrorism-funding probe.

The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.

Like the CIA leak investigation into who in the Bush administration revealed the identity of Valerie Plame, the current Justice Department probe is being conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, who is prosecuting Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the Plame case.
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Fitzgerald said the statute of limitations "on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating" will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year.

From all that we've been told about Fitzgerald's work, I expect thoroughness. And I still think that the criminals will be brought into court.

I also expect there are pardons waiting for them. If the actual sentences were to occur after the end of this administration, it might be a very good thing.

The jury is in, and I'm still expecting justice.

Terrorism, Administration Aiming Weapon at Itself

I have listened over the course of a few afternoons in Dallas Federal Court to a complete perversion of our court systems to harass Muslim charities. The trial is one of several attempts by our Justice Department to connect longtime charities with terrorism. Previous ones have all failed.

I was not at all surprised, after this experience, to hear about an ongoing bungling operation in the Middle East, the designation of a group as terrorists for totally political reasons. The group is protected by our military, while it is called terrorist by our occupied White House. This country is a laughing stock throughout the world for the ignorance of its foreign policy.

The MEK, Mujahideen-e Khalq, was designated as terrorist in 1997 in the course of an attempt to initiate warmer political relationships with Iran. They have been used against the government of Iran, and protected as an ally, although their designation as terrorists continues. The situation is as full of ludicrous use of our powers internationally as is the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation. It looks like one more indication that ignorance in the executive branch has prevented this country from formulating a rational, operative foreign policy.

An episode on Frontline, Showdown With Iran, (10/23/2007) included interviews with longtime active Middle Eastern correspondents and U.S. government officials concerning MEK. The following delineates the problem in its present form, an interview with Alireza Jafarzadeh, Former spokesman, National Council of Resistance - the organization of those resisting the present government in Iran.

The Iranians officials told us that in the meetings in Baghdad they laid out what they said was evidence that the MEK was providing intelligence to the U.S. military. Are they?

The Mujahideen-e Khalq have been providing information about the Iranian regime's operations both in terms of their terrorist operation and their nuclear weapons program in open, public press conferences to the whole world. ...

... What I'm asking is more specific. Are they, to your knowledge, having discussions about intelligence of what Iran is doing inside Iraq?

I think the Mujahideen-e Khalq in Camp Ashraf, to the best of my knowledge, are having discussions about the security of Iraq which directly affects their own situation, their own security in Ashraf, as well as the security of Iraqis, as well as the security of the Americans who are present there. ...

... I'm talking about knowledge of what Iran is doing inside Iraq. Are they discussing that directly with U.S. officials?

I'm not aware of all the details of their discussions. But I know in general the Mujahideen-e Khalq in Camp Ashraf have been meeting with the U.S. military officials, the United States officials in that country dealing with the situation of their own security and dealing with the issue of their own protected rights. ...

... [How do you respond to the allegations that the MEK is a terrorist organization and that it killed American citizens in the 1970s?]

This is absolutely false. Not only the Mujahideen have denied this, they have been very up front saying that those six American servicemen who were killed at the time of the shah some 30 years ago were killed in the hands of some elements who had infiltrated and staged a coup d'etat within the organization at the time that the organization was under tremendous pressure by the shah. And those individuals also killed the Mujahideen-e Khalq members as well as those Americans. So this organization is not responsible for the acts of people who went their own way and killed the members of this organization, and they also condemned it at that time. ...

[Why do you think, then, that the MEK is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizaions?]

... The terrorist designation of the Mujahideen-e Khalq back in 1997, only weeks after [former President Mohammad] Khatami took office as the new moderate president of the Iranian regime, was a clear political move on the part of the State Department, as a goodwill gesture to Tehran. In fact, the Clinton administration officials are on the record ... that the designation was meant to open up relations between the United States and the Khatami government at that time. And there was no justification whatsoever for that designation.

Plus the fact that all the members of the military structure of the Mujahideen-e Khalq, which the [U.S.] Army had in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, were subjected to 16 months of detailed investigation, and not even one single person could be charged with terrorism. So the question is, where are the terrorists? And what is this terrorism charge?

And how in the world is it that this organization that has provided the most valuable information to the whole world about the nuclear weapons program of the Iran regime, about the terror network of the ayatollahs, is getting on the terrorist list? Yet the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, which is the backbone of the terror machine of Tehran, they're not even on that terrorist list? ... That's an irony.

Update, Oct. 25, 2007: On Oct. 25, 2007, the Bush administration announced new unilateral sanctions against Iran. Most notably, the administration named Iran's Revolutionary Guard and its Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics "entitites of proliferation concern" regarding weapons of mass destruction. It also targeted the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force for "providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations." Washington Post writer and longtime Iran observer Robin Wright called the sanctions "the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy" and "the first time the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country's military."

The unilateralism that distinguishes policies the administration has followed have resulted in breakdowns in all areas of government. Abroad, the end of the regime is regarded with relief, and at home much the same. Rational conduct of foreign affairs is the absolute minimum any country can look for from its government. It has been completely lacking in all its operations by the existing one.

The harassment of legitimate organizations is a disgrace, as is the Department of Justice's politicization. They can't be ended soon enough.

Reviving Justice

The scandals that are still unwinding at the 'Justice' Department have made quite an impression on those who will be needing to govern the country. At the Holy Land Foundation trial, I have watched in horror as this government was represented by attorneys telling jurors to rely on their memories rather than evidence. The politicization of the department has obviously resulted in a personnel problem.

The incoming administration is wasting no time turning around the ruination that has been inflicted by lawbreakers on our justice system.

Political considerations affected every crevice of the department during the Bush years, from the summer intern hiring program to the dispensing of legal advice about detainee interrogations, according to reports by the inspector general and testimony from bipartisan former DOJ officials at congressional hearings.

Although retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey, who took charge of the department in the winter, has drawn praise for limiting contacts between White House officials and prosecutors, and for firmly rejecting the role of politics in law enforcement, restoring public confidence in the department's law enforcement actions will be central, lawmakers and former government officials say.
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"The infusion of politics into the Justice Department and an abdication of responsibility by its leaders have dealt a severe blow," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the panel's ranking Republican, wrote in an opinion piece last month. "Great damage has been done to the credibility and effectiveness of the Justice Department."
(snip)
Another critical, early judgment must be made about how to allocate scarce resources without shortchanging national security. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 7 percent of the department's budget shifted to terrorism, away from drug trafficking, organized crime and white-collar misdeeds, according to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office.

The terrorism trials which have all ended in defeat for the DoJ will soon come to a conclusion in Dallas, with a jury that has received easily the most mind-boggling prosecutorial admonition I have ever seen. Hopefully they are not the halfwits the government addressed itself toward. It would be a very good thing if the administration returns the Department to the work of ending crime instead of witchhunting.

The country will be better served by simple competence in staffing the DoJ. We hope that a fine mind like President Obama's will serve the country well, and give us actual excellence in the positions in which public service is needed once again.

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Another piece of the article raises that spectre of nonpartisan executive decision makingthe right wing is wishing for.

"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up."

Obama did not win with bipartisan votes, and should not give over to the wishes of those who fought, very dirty, to keep eight years of disasters going in this country.

I agree with Avedon Carol, what the Republicans believe in is indefensible. It has ruined our justice system, and needs to be stopped right now.

Closing Gitmo

Today's Washington Post has an article which suggests that President Elect Obama is planning to carry through on his campaign promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Further, he intends to relocate the detainees in federal prisons in the US and to try them in US courts, rather than by Military Commissions. The logistics for such moves will be daunting, according to the article:

Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect. They believe the move would create a global wave of diplomatic and popular goodwill that could accelerate the transfer of some detainees to other countries.

But the advisers, as well as outside national security and legal experts, said the new administration will face a thicket of legal, diplomatic, political and logistical challenges to closing the prison and prosecuting the most serious offenders in the United States -- an effort that could take many months or longer. Among the thorniest issues will be how to build effective cases without using evidence obtained by torture, an issue that attorneys for the detainees will almost certainly seek to exploit.

I was fascinated by the last sentence from that quote. "Exploit": there's an interesting word choice. We know that in the civilized world (a place from which we've removed ourselves) torture is illegal. We also know that information obtained by torture is hardly reliable. Why wouldn't an ethical defense attorney seek to exclude such evidence?

And it isn't as if the federal courts will be a walk in the park for those detainees who will finally be tried. As Ruth has pointed out in her series on the Holy Land Foundation trial (scroll down for the latest), the trials can be just as contentious and the prosecutors just as heavy handed as they've been so far under the Military Commissions system. Still, the rules of evidence and the concept of fairness is at least expected in such a venue. Those who in fact engaged in terrorist crimes should have nothing to complain about.

Our civilian court system has worked effectively when dealing with crimes, and, after all, that is what the US is complaining those being detained engaged in. Here are some interesting statistics on the issue (cited in the WaPo article):

In a report issued in May, Human Rights First noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there had been 107 successful prosecutions of international terrorism cases in the federal courts, compared with three convictions in military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, including one plea bargain.

When there is "clean" evidence gathered in legally acceptable ways, the prosecutor has a shot at a conviction without depriving the defendant in due process. The problems prosecutors will face in these cases is that in many cases, the evidence isn't clean and hasn't been gathered in legally acceptable ways, nor has that evidence been shared with the defendants (many of whom still don't know what precise charges have been made against them). Those prosecutors have a much rougher road ahead of them, but that is not the detainees' fault.

If we are serious about changing this nation, of returning to our tradition of the rule of law, then we must begin with Guantanamo Bay. Risky? Perhaps, but after the last eight years, it's a risk we have to take.

"There is always a risk of acquittal, and there is a risk some people who are released will return to the battlefield," said one Obama adviser. "There is no risk-free option."

Ultimately it's not about who "they" are, it's about who we are and what we want to be.