HLF Jury Begins Deliberations
By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)
DALLAS – The fate of five men accused of running the nation's largest terrorist-financing front is in the hands of a jury.
The men, officers and employees at the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) are charged with conspiracy and with providing material support to Hamas through their charitable donations. Prosecutors say HLF funneled more than $12 million to Hamas, mostly through a network of social welfare charities in the West Bank and Gaza.
During two and a half days of closing arguments that ended Wednesday afternoon, attorneys offered strikingly different interpretations of those charities, known as zakat committees. Prosecutors say the committees are controlled by Hamas and their activities – food programs, schools and hospitals - are a vital cog in the terrorist group's campaign to win the hearts and minds of Palestinians.
Defense attorneys say Palestinian society wouldn't allow that, that the committees were non partisan in nature and sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority which is a bitter rival to Hamas.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Garrett had the final word in the two-month long trial. In a rebuttal argument, he urged jurors to take disparate pieces of evidence together to see what HLF did for Hamas. He spent considerable time on exhibits showing HLF was part of a broader group, a Palestine Committee established in the U.S. by the Muslim Brotherhood, an 80-year-old Islamist movement that seeks the global empowerment of Islamic law.
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