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AMP Comment – September 14, 2008
Why Muslim charities need BBB’s seal of approval?
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Amid an open ended secrutiny of Muslim charities in the post 9/11 America, seven Muslim non-profit groups are seeking Better Business Bureau’s stamp of approval to assure the potential donors that one day their door will not be knocked by FBI.
San Jose Mercury news has reported that seven Muslim charities are seeking Better Business Bureau’s stamp of approval in the wake of government scrutiny after 9/11.
Seven years after 9/11, American Muslims are paying the price for guilt by association.
Muslim charities remain under scrutiny since 9/11, while many major charities were shut down by government in the name of fighting terrorism but in seven years, the government was unable to prove their link to the so-called “terror financing.” The American Muslim charities are being targeted to intimidate the seven-million strong American Muslim community.
In the latest verdict in a high profile Muslim charity trial in July last, Muhamed Mubayyid, the former treasurer of Massachusetts Care International Inc., like two other officials was not charged with financing “terrorist groups.” Mubayyid was sentenced to 11 months in federal prison for concealing the nature of a tax-exempt charity.
Interestingly, on last June, Judge Sylor ruled that a jury should not have convicted the three in January of most of the tax-related crimes for which they were tried. The Judge ruled that the federal prosecutors failed to prove that the two defendants, Samir Al-Monla and Emadeddin Muntasser. He pointed out that much of the government's evidence against the two was flimsy or cobbled together with flawed reasoning.
Judge Sylor ordered immediate release of Samir Al-Monla.
Interestingly, during the 32-day trial Judge Saylor forbade references to the 9/11 terrorist attacks or to Osama bin Laden when the prosecution produced contentious witnesses linked to the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Website globalterroralert.com.
One “expert” witness was Matthew Levitt, former Deputy Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, an ex-employee at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was founded by a former official of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying organization of Israel. Levitt has spent time living with his father in Israel and speaks Hebrew, but only now is learning Arabic.
When the prosecution presented another “expert” witness, Evan F. Kohlmann, the founder of the pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim/Arab website www.globalterroralert.com, Judge Saylor warned the jury that the case is not about 9-11 or terrorism and they should draw no inferences from the fact the defendants are Middle Eastern and Muslims.
Tellingly, three weeks before the Care International case began last fall, U.S. District Judge Joe Fish, in Dallas, declared a mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development charity case after jurors failed to reach a verdict.
The Holy Land case was considered so significant that President Bush personally announced the seizure of its assets in December 2001. He made this announcement at a press conference in the Rose Garden four days after a request from then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The president said that money raised by the group "is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers."
In 2004, John Ashcroft, the then US Attorney General, personally announced the indictment in the HLF case. "This prosecution sends a clear message: There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks. The United States will ensure that both terrorists and their financiers meet the same, certain justice," he said.
At the time of Al-Arian's 120-page indictment in February 2003, John Ashcroft, said Al-Arian has been actively funding terrorist attacks in Israel. Ashcroft described Al-Arian as the US leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A charge that was not proved.
The case against Salah, and his co-defendant Abdelhaleem Ashqar, was deemed so significant that the indictments were announced in a news conference by John Ashcroft along with Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004 At the time, Ashcroft said that these two men "played a substantial role in financing and supporting international terrorism ... [and] took advantage of the freedoms of an open society to foster and finance acts of terror."
With beefed-up investigative powers authorized under the Patriot Act, the prosecution utilized all the legal tools available in the post-9/11 America: Secret evidence, years of secret wiretapping and even evidence extracted through torture by Israelis.
In Holy Land Foundation and Mohammad Salah’s cases Israeli intelligence agents were allowed to testify under fictitious names. During the trial of Salah, the trial judge’s rulings set very negative precedents regarding due process for future cases. First, the judge admitted Salah’s confession when he sided with the prosecution claim that Salah was not tortured. Second, the judge allowed two Israeli agents to act as witnesses using fictitious names. Consequently, in Holy Land Foundation trial, Israeli agents were allowed as witnesses using fictitious names.
Salute to the jurors who had the courage and integrity not to fall for the government's much abused "terrorism" rhetoric. In the HLF case even one juror proclaimed that there was no credible evidence, with the government relying on information dating back 20 years -- before Hamas had been declared a terrorist organization by the United States -- as well as loads of "secret" documents and anonymous intelligence witnesses from Israel.
The Dallas Court has declared mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation case but still pending before the court is a request from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to strike a list of un-indicted co-conspirators filed by prosecutors in the case. The Holy Land Foundation prosecutors used McCarthyite tactics by implicating mainstream Muslim groups to silence genuine Muslim voices while providing ammunition to the anti-Muslim organizations. The Department of Justice named 306 individuals and organizations as un-indicted co-conspirators which include the largest Muslim civil right group, CAIR; the nation's largest Muslim educational source, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust, the country's largest holding company of deeds to about 300 mosques, Islamic centers and schools in the U.S.
The perverse nature of the un-indicted co-conspirator designation made public in the HLF case is that those so-designated cannot challenge the designation in a court of law and thus have no way to restore their reputation to its earlier standing. This is a unique situation where any person or organization can be designated “guilty by association” and stigmatized as such without legal redress.
There is no doubt that the Department of Justice in selecting that list of organizations and individuals intended to accomplish such results, especially for three of the largest and most effective American Muslim organizations.
It will not be too much to say that the three showcase trials are likely to go down in the record books as one of the great abuses of the American legal process. About 500 cases have been brought against Muslims in America after 9/11. Tellingly, half of these have been dismissed as being without merit. The rest have all resulted in either acquittals or negotiated pleas on minor charges which are unrelated to the original indictment. Of the 500 cases, it is estimated that some 30 of them may have had some reasonable foundation in law.
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