CAIR, ISNA and NAIT Shown To Be Hamas Supporters In Federal Court

Boy, when things go wrong...

The Muslim Brotherhood fronts CAIR, The Islamic Society of North America(ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust(NAIT) have been moaning about being libeled ever since they were publicly named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorist fund-raising trial.

Since Judge Jorge Solis' verdict and legal memorandum were sealed, the aforementioned groups have been clamoring for these items to be released and unsealed and the 5th Court of Appeals finally complied, agreeing that the Islamist groups' rights had been violated by Judge Solis since the trial records were sealed without their being allowed to respond.

Unfortunately, not only did Judge Solis ruling make a prima facie case for these groups in fact providing material support for terrorism,but the appellate court endorsed the findings!

The Government identifies four portions of the record from the first trail that purportedly established that CAIR was a "joint venturer and co-conspirator": (1) a Government exhibit showing the objective of the Palestine Committee is to support Hamas; (2) a Government exhibit showing CAIR founder Omar Ahmad is part of the Palestine Committee and Mousa Abu Marzook is its head; (3) a Government exhibit listing CAIR as part of the Palestine Committee; and (4) the testimony of Special Agent Lara Burns and accompanying exhibits placing the CAIR founder at the 1993 Philadelphia conference and describing the CAIR founder's mediation of a dispute between HLF and Ashqar over Hamas fundraising . (Resp. at 12-13.) The Government does not mention any occasion where it used the 801(d)(2)(E) hearsay exception to introduce a statement of CAIR. The four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR's involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas. (p. 6-7)

Judge Solis clearly shows the evidence against ISNA, NAIT and CAIR concerning their active support of HLF's fundraising for Hamas pages (pp. 14-19) and ruled that while the list of unindicted co-conspirators should be sealed, their names should not be expunged.

CAIR issued a press release trying to spin this by claiming that they had been 'vindicated', but that was sheer bolshoi on their part. They should have left well enough alone.

While the 5th Circuit agreed that the unindicted co-conspirator list should not have been made public and that Judge Solis went overboard in sealing the records, they did not vacate his findings. Instead, the appeals court endorsed them, finding that the Government had "produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (‘IAP’), and with Hamas," and that, "The Muslim Brotherhood supervised the creation of the ‘Palestine Committee,’ which was put in charge of other organizations, such as HLF, IAP, UASR, and ISNA," and, "During the [1993 Philadelphia] conference, Palestine Committee members discussed using ISNA as official cover for their activities."

Whoopsie.

The actual ruling is here:

2009 order on Holy Land Foundation unindicted coconspirator list

( hat tip, Weasel Zippers and Rusty)

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