For those not familiar with the case...this is a huge trial...
DALLAS: Prosecutors were set to open their case Tuesday against leaders of a Muslim charity that federal officials say funneled millions of dollars to the militant Palestinian Islamic group Hamas.
The trial in U.S. district court caps an investigation into the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development that lasted more than a decade and spanned half the world.
The defense lawyers will also get a chance to explain their side of the story Tuesday to a jury that was selected from a pool of 750 people. The trial is expected to last several months.
Defense attorneys say Holy Land, once the largest Muslim charity in the United States, supported humanitarian efforts in Palestinian neighborhoods but did not knowingly aid Hamas.
Holy Land officials said they supported humanitarian causes, but authorities said they sought out families whose relatives had died or been jailed for helping Hamas, including suicide bombers.
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The five men on trial are not accused of being terrorists. Rather, they are charged in a 42-count indictment with funneling $36 million to individuals and groups tied to Hamas, including $12.4 million after President Bill Clinton designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1995, which made contact with the group illegal.
In the indictment, federal authorities charged the Holy Land foundation with supporting a foreign terrorist group, money laundering, conspiracy and filing false tax returns.
Federal agents raided Holy Land’s offices in December 2001. President George W. Bush personally announced the seizure of the charity’s assets, declaring that, “The net is closing” on those who fund terrorism.
The personal involvement of Bush and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft made the Holy Land case one of the highest-profile anti-terrorism prosecutions since the 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
The Justice Department has had a mixed record in other cases. Trials in Chicago and Florida ended with acquittals of three defendants charged with helping fund Hamas, although they were convicted of lesser charges.
In February, the spiritual leader of a Georgia mosque was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison after he admitted helping Hamas. Prosecutors said the man sent donations to Holy Land knowing it would go to Hamas.
Prosecutors said in court filings they would probably call the Georgia imam, Mohamed Shorbagi, as a witness against Holy Land.
In addition to Holy Land, the defendants include Shukri Abu Baker, the charity’s president; Ghassan Elashi, its chairman; Abdulrahman Odeh, the group’s New Jersey representative; Mohammad El-Mezain, the group’s original chairman; and Mufid Abdulqader, a top fundraiser. Two other men named in the indictment remain fugitives.
Elashi was convicted in two previous trials of having illegal financial dealings with a terrorist — a high-ranking Hamas official — and improperly exporting computers to countries deemed supporters of terrorism.
Baker, Elashi, El-Mezain and others founded Holy Land around 1988 in California and moved to Richardson, a Dallas suburb, in 1992. The group had offices in California, New Jersey, Illinois and in Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Evidence against Holy Land and its leaders was gathered through FBI surveillance, bank records in the United States and abroad, and from documents seized by Israeli military forces, according to prosecutors.
DALLAS -- Three of the first 26 people interviewed for jury duty in the case of Muslim charity officials accused of financing Hamas terrorists said they feared for their safety, including one man who said he wouldn't put anything past the Middle Eastern militants.
>>>The group had offices in California, New Jersey, Illinois and in Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.<<<