Hamas terrorist financing trial to open in US
Prosecutors will make opening arguments Thursday in the case of a Chicago grocer accused of funneling millions of dollars to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
Hailed by the government as a victory in the war on terror, the case is seen by some in the Arab-American community as part of a broader crackdown on Muslim charities and an erosion of constitutional guarantees of due process and a fair trial.
Muhammad Salah spent nearly five years in an Israeli prison in the mid-1990s after admitting he committed a number of crimes on behalf of Hamas, which swept to power in January elections this year but remains designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Painted as a top "bag man" whose US citizenship and gentle demeanor helped him slip across borders with piles of cash, prosecutors allege that Salah continued to launder money for Hamas when he returned to the United States in 1997.
Salah's lawyers said he was just delivering humanitarian aid and tried to suppress his confessions to Israeli security forces by arguing they were obtained under torture.
Prosecutors accused them of trying to put the state of Israel on trial and flew two Israeli intelligence officers and an Israeli police officer to Chicago to refute the charges.
Local rights groups were outraged that the public was banned from witnessing the testimony; an edited transcript was later made available.
Federal judge Amy St. Eve ruled that Salah's allegations of sleep deprivation and other forms of physical and psychological torture were not credible. She noted that case law gives testimony a higher weight than sworn statements and that Salah did not take the stand.
Avoiding a potentially damning cross-examination was a gamble that could cost Salah his freedom. The evidence in the confession is damning and includes detailed descriptions of his alleged crimes. His lawyers are hoping a jury will be more willing to accept that the confession was coerced.
"The question is, what was his intent?" said defense attorney Michael Deutsch, who noted that the United States had not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization until years after Salah's arrest and confession in Israel.
The mild-mannered devout Muslim is seen by some Arab-Americans as the victim of a post-9/11 witch hunt and a skewed understanding of the situation in the Middle East.
"For many, he is a symbol of a larger Palestinian struggle," said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Nobody sees Salah in a vacuum."
He is seen by others as a cold, calculating supporting of killers.
"I wanted to reach across the table and strangle him. He was sitting there, making himself so innocent," recalled Joyce Boim, who was awarded 156 million dollars in damages from Salah and several Muslim charities after her 17-year-old son, David Boim, was killed by Hamas gunmen at a Jerusalem bus stop.
Salah's 2004 arrest was hailed by the US government as a triumph of the controversial US Patriot Act.
"Today, terrorists have lost yet another source of financing and support for their bombs and bloodshed," then US Attorney General John Ashcroft said when unsealing the indictment against Salah, Abdelhaleem Ashqar of Virginia and Hamas leader Mousa Marzook, who is considered a fugitive living in Syria.
A victory in the case would help the battered reputation of the Bush administration's legal response to the war on terror following recent high-profile failures, such as a ruling by the Supreme Court that the administration overstepped its authority in setting up military tribunals to try war on terror detainees held at a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Prosecutors have had significantly more luck with cases involving those accused of funneling money to terrorists, said Bobby Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University Law School in North Carolina and an expert in terror cases.
"Although there have been some prosecutions that have not won out, by and large the government has prevailed in its material support prosecutions," he told AFP in a telephone interview.
Salah faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in jail for racketeering and obstruction of justice. A charge of providing material support to terrorists was dropped amid pre-trial legal wrangling.
AFP
