TERRORISM U.S. indicts Muslim charity over Hamas donations

The indictment says the group had given $12.4 million to Hamas since 1995.
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WASHINGTON -- The United States has charged a Texas-based Muslim charity and seven of its leaders with providing material support to a terrorist organization because of its donations to the Palestinian group Hamas, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Tuesday.
The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and its officers were accused in a 42-count indictment of providing $12.4 million to Hamas since 1995. They also were charged with money laundering, conspiracy and filing false tax returns in an indictment handed up by a Dallas grand jury Monday and unsealed Tuesday.
Hamas, whose members have conducted dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
"For the past 33 months, the Department of Justice has used every tool within the law to identify, to disrupt, to dismantle terrorist networks and those organizations that supply the blood money that makes such murderous acts possible," Ashcroft said. "Today, a U.S.-based charity that claims to do good works is charged with funding the works of evil."
Response
A lawyer for the foundation called the indictment baseless and questioned its timing, in the middle of the Democratic National Convention.
"Personally, I think it's for political effect ... because everything in the indictment, every allegation in the indictment, is something the Department of Justice was fully aware of 2 1/2 years ago," said John Boyd, an Albuquerque, N.M., attorney.
"If there's a silver lining here, it's that the government is going to have to finally come forward and substantiate the claims it made about the Holy Land Foundation," Boyd said.
In addition to the charity itself, which is based in Richardson, Texas, north of Dallas, the indictment charges seven top officials: Shukri Abu Baker, the group's CEO; Ghassan Elashi, chairman; Haitham Maghawri, the executive director; Mohammed El-Mezain; director of endowments; Akram Mishal, director of projects and grants; Mufid Abdulquader, a fund-raiser; and the Holy Land's New Jersey representative, Abdulrahman Odeh.
Ashcroft said that five of the seven defendants had been arrested but that the other two, Maghawri and Mishal, "to our knowledge are not in the United States" and "are considered to be fugitives from justice."
Shut down in 2001
The federal government shut down the foundation in December 2001 and seized about $4 million in assets. Asked why it had taken so long to bring an indictment, Ashcroft said the multi-agency investigation was a complex undertaking. "These cases are brought when they're ready and can't be brought until they are."
The attorney general said Elashi was convicted in a separate case last month in federal court for illegally shipping computers to state sponsors of terrorism.
The foundation filed a complaint with the Justice Department's inspector general Monday claiming that the FBI fabricated its case and relied on mistranslations of interrogations in Israel. Asked about the action, Ashcroft said, "We will prove the case which is alleged in court."
The indictment alleges that the foundation and the defendants provided financial support to the families of Hamas suicide bombers, detainees and activists, fully knowing that they were supporting Hamas' terrorist infrastructure.
"The defendants targeted specifically for financial aid families related to well-known Hamas terrorists killed or jailed by the Israelis," said Ashcroft. "In this manner, the defendants effectively rewarded past and encouraged future suicide bombings and terrorist activities on behalf of Hamas."