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PHOENIX, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Muslim leaders in Arizona have drawn increased scrutiny from federal officials in the past year because of a string of suspicious incidents, officials say. Although no one in the state has been accused of supporting terrorists, one Mesa, Ariz., man was charged with lying to the FBI during the terror financing investigation into a Muslim charity accused of funneling money to the Palestinian group Hamas, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. Also drawing attention to Arizona Muslims was a target-shooting episode in Phoenix that involved a large group of Muslim men and boys firing hundreds of...

Breaking: Obama Advisor Jarrett Tied to Real Estate in Scandal BREAKING: Barack Obama named his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett as his senior advisor today.FOX News reported: President-elect Barack Obama is naming his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior adviser. Jarrett, who hired Michelle Obama for a job in the Chicago mayor's office years ago, is one of the president-elect's closest friends and advisers. Her name has been floated for several top administration jobs. But Obama settled on the senior adviser role, said a person close to the president-elect and willing to speak...

A Clinton-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of Michael Savage today in an attempt by the Council on American-Islamic Relations to extract attorney fees and costs in a case the nationally syndicated talk radio host brought against the Muslim lobby group. "This is a huge victory for me, personally, but also for the rest of America who is afraid of this lawsuit-happy group of intimidators," Savage said. Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California previously dismissed Savage's copyright infringement and RICO lawsuit against CAIR. Savage alleged CAIR illegally published singled-out quotes and audio...

DALLAS – Jury deliberations begin Wednesday morning in the case of five men accused of routing millions of dollars to Hamas. Closing arguments in the terror-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and its former officers ended late Tuesday afternoon. After the second full day of hearing from attorneys, U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis suggested jurors select a foreperson and go home for the evening. The men are accused of routing millions of dollars to Hamas through a series of Palestinian charities prosecutors say were controlled by the terrorist group. But defense attorneys cast...

The Holy Land Foundation gave more than $12 million to Palestinian terrorists, prosecutors in Texas said in closing arguments at the Muslim charity's trial. "Don't let the defendants deceive you that what they did, they did to support widows and orphans," federal prosecutor Barry Jonas told a jury Monday in Dallas. A trial last year against Holy Land ended in a mistrial, the Dallas Morning New reported Tuesday, noting prosecutors this time eliminated much of their previous case but kept their essential charge that Holyland was created to raise money for Hamas, deemed a terrorist group under U.S. law.Lawyers for...

Politicians normally are pretty protective of their public images. They might take campaign money from some shady characters, but common sense dictates that they avoid too many public associations that can prove embarrassing. One exception seems to be when the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is involved. Growing public evidence shows that CAIR has been dishonest about its roots and its ultimate objective. But that fact has done nothing to give pause to several members of Congress who continue to speak at CAIR functions and support the group's political agenda. CAIR has established roots in the Islamic Association for...

DALLAS – They sang praises to a terrorist group, had telephone access to its leadership and deceived the public about their true ambitions, a federal prosecutor said Monday about the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Five former HLF officials are on trial for illegally routing millions of dollars in donations to Hamas through a series of Palestinian charities, known as zakat committees, that prosecutors say are controlled by the terrorist group. In his closing argument, federal prosecutor Barry Jonas pointed to what he called the "highlights of the highlights" of the government's six-week case. It includes hundreds...

The Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach director participated in a meeting in mid September that was attended by several controversial Muslim activists, NBC News has learned. The Obama campaign now concedes that was a misjudgment, and that its top Muslim staffer would not have attended the meeting if she had known the full participant list beforehand. “Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC. The Muslim outreach meeting On September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

September 11, 2008, 2:00 p.m. Meet Ingrid MattsonIslam professor mixes Islamism, academics, and politics. By Jonathan Schanzer Ingrid Mattson, a 45-year-old Canadian-born convert to Islam, caused an uproar in the blogosphere after she was invited by the Democratic party to a gathering of religious leaders in Denver on the eve of the convention. Other notable participants included Bishop Charles E. Blake, (Church of God In Christ) and Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb (Orthodox Union). The commotion stemmed from the fact that Mattson is the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization with close ties to the Muslim...

A federal judge has denied a request by defense attorneys in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case who asked that next month’s re-trial be delayed. In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis called their claim that they cannot be ready for trial because of delays in payments of their court-appointed attorneys’ fees “hyperbolic and inaccurate.” Judge Solis chastised the court-appointed attorneys in the case for waiting until late March, about five months after the October mistrial, to file their budget for the re-trial, which includes expenses for pre-trial preparation such as pay for experts and air...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

"CAIR-National had a picture of the World Trade Center on its website and asked readers to donate to help the survivors of the disaster. They offered a link to websites for Muslim and non-Muslim organizations collecting donations for 9/11 survivors, including the Holy Land Foundation's website." (Emphasis mine.)

Terror Financing: After the Holy Land Foundation case ended in a mistrial, Muslim groups cheered and scolded the U.S. for a witch hunt. But defendants got some help from the inside.t turns out that a Hamas-sympathizing juror sabotaged the biggest terror-funding case in U.S. history by bullying jurors who favored convictions. According to interviews conducted since the October mistrial, juror William Neal intimidated colleagues into voting for acquittals of Holy Land leaders accused of funneling millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families. Neal, a Dallas graphic artist who voted not guilty across the board, launched into obscenity-laced tirades against...

Detention transformed doctor into man of peace Saudi carries no bitterness home as he ends San Antonio stay 05/25/2002 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down. Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds...

In the terrorism case of two young Egyptian nationals and University of South Florida students arrested August 4 in South Carolina, fascinating twists and turns abound. There’s a secret recording of the defendants discussing strategy shortly after their arrest. There’s a You Tube video in which one of the defendants gave instructions in Arabic on converting a remote-control toy into a bomb detonator, which one defendant allegedly told police was made to help people in Arab countries “defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries,” specifically “against those who fought for the United States.” That’s not all. The father of...

THE trial of four key figures with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended last week with a hung jury. Holy Land's defenders and allies are trumpeting the mistrial as a huge victory. Yet the defendants remain in legal jeopardy, with a new trial almost assured - and the prosecution has, at a minimum, closed a lucrative funding channel for the Palestinian terror group Hamas. ...The trial record conclusively demonstrated that Holy Land and several of its unindicted co-conspirators - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - grew out of Hamas. Moreover, it showed that they spent...

A federal judge in Dallas declared a mistrial in the case of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) when a jury was unable to reach a verdict on 197 counts brought by the government that accused the Muslim charity of funding terrorism. A hung jury, however, is not an acquittal and even if the Holy Land Foundation eventually is acquitted (the government has indicated it will retry the case) it doesn't necessarily mean the accused is innocent (think O.J. Simpson's murder trial). Anyone in doubt about the game plan for infiltrating, undermining and attacking America from within...