Sentence in Chicago Hamas Trial

By Matthew Levitt

Abdulhalim Ashqar, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal comtempt in a Hamas-related trial in Chicago earlier this year, was sentenced today to 135 months imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. The sentence was arrived at through application of the Sentencing Guidelines terrorism enhancement based on what the judge thought the trial evidence showed about Ashqar's activities for, and knowledge of, Hamas

On February 1, after fourteen days of deliberation, a Chicago jury acquitted Muhammad Salah and Ashqar of charges that they were involved in a racketeering conspiracy by financing and supporting Hamas terrorist activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The two were accused of laundering funds, facilitating communications, and providing recruits for Hamas, but were convicted only on minor charges of obstruction of justice and, in Ashqar's case, criminal contempt.

A large body of evidence documents Salah and Ashqar's activities on behalf of Hamas, though they predated the group's official terrorist designation. Marzouk dispatched Salah to the West Bank and Gaza several times between 1989 and 1993 to fund and reorganize the Hamas military wing, first after the 1989 arrest of some 260 Hamas activists and again in the wake of the 1992 deportation of hundreds of Hamas members and other radicals to southern Lebanon. Around 1990, Salah "hand-selected ten people to serve on a military team and had them trained in the United States by Muslim instructors from the United States and Lebanon who had military experience," according to information Salah provided to Israeli officials. Marzouk instructed him "to recruit people in the U.S. As a result, various operatives [in America] learned how to prepare explosive charges. These activists were planned to come to Israel and join the military activities of the Hamas there."

At the time of his January 1993 arrest in Israel, Salah had $97,000 in cash in his possession and admitted to distributing approximately $140,000 to activists in Hamas's Qassam Brigades. Salah had already provided funds to a Hamas military cell the previous year. Salah Arouri, the Hamas recruiter and commander to whom Salah provided these funds, admitted receiving "approximately $96,000 to procure weapons from Abu Ahmed [Salah] in August 1992" and providing "$45,000 to Musa Muhammed Salah Dudin to be used for weapons to conduct attacks." Dudin purchased several weapons, including one M-16 rifle, two Kalashnikov rifles, two Uzi submachine guns, two or three 8mm and 9mm pistols, one carbine rifle, and ammunition for each. Dudin and others then used these weapons in attacks on Israelis, including the murder of Yuval Tutange on December 12, 1992.

Ashqar's actions on behalf of Hamas were also the subject of an FBI investigation. In a 1994 telephone conversation recorded by the FBI, Sheik Jamil Hamami, a Hamas political leader in the West Bank, told Ashqar and a fellow Hamas member in Yemen: "We . . . will act to make [the peace process] fail too. Operations [of] particular types will take place to shake this [Palestinian] self-rule administration." FBI files include statements of Hamas militants arrested by Israeli authorities detailing Ashqar's role in overseeing Hamas militant activity. For example, Sufian Abu Samara, a Qassam Brigades leader in Gaza, provided verifiable details about specific funds transfers that Ashqar facilitated for Hamas militant activities, noting that Ashqar often specified how the funds should be spent. Until his arrest in 1991, Samara focused on recruiting new Hamas operatives to carry out attacks, especially at Gaza's Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold where Ashqar and many senior Hamas leaders have worked.

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