Islamic coalition says bias prompted arrests -
tearful relatives criticize charges against brothers Excerpt:
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Stephens declined to respond to statements made at the news conference, as did Dallas FBI officials.
At the news conference at a Richardson hotel, about 200 supporters applauded the statements of several speakers.
Mohammed Elmougy, past president of the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, questioned the timing of the arrests, coming years after authorities say they began investigating.
He suggested the raids in Dallas and elsewhere across the country were ordered to counteract the airing of a PBS documentary about the prophet Mohammed.
"It's no secret that Muslims nationwide have been publicizing this day for months," Mr. Elmougy said. "We hoped to defuse some of the bigoted remarks about Islam made by many hateful, prominent figures, including the attorney general [John Ashcroft] himself."
It's hard to believe this is happening in our own back yard here in Dallas County.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Texas ping list!. . .don't be shy.
No, you don't HAVE to be a Texan to get on this list!
Charity inquiry dated to 1989 Ex-agent says criminal probe of InfoCom based on Holy Land data
12/20/2002
By STEVE McGONIGLE / The Dallas Morning News
The FBI had conducted an intelligence-gathering operation on Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development almost since the self-styled Palestinian charity was established in California in 1989, the former head of the Dallas FBI office said Thursday.
Danny Defenbaugh, who retired from the FBI in May, said that he persuaded his superiors in 1999 to open a criminal investigation of InfoCom Corp., a Richardson Internet services business, based on information obtained on Holy Land Foundation.
The foundation's office in Richardson was across the street from InfoCom, which provided Internet services to the foundation. The two businesses shared some employees and one officer.
Holy Land Foundation, which moved to Richardson in 1992, first came to Mr. Defenbaugh's attention after he took over as special agent-in-charge of the Dallas FBI office in January 1998.
The following year, he said, he pressed the head of the FBI's counterterrorism section to let him begin a criminal case on InfoCom, a business whose officers included Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder and officer of Holy Land Foundation.
Mr. Elashi and four of his brothers were indicted Tuesday on charges of doing business with a senior political leader of Hamas and shipping computer parts to two terrorist nations. The Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook, and his wife, Nadia Marzook, also were indicted, along with InfoCom.
A detention hearing scheduled for the four men Friday afternoon will determine whether the men remain behind bars pending trial.
Authorities say Mr. Marzook, whom the federal government has designated a terrorist and who was deported in 1998, made an initial $150,000 investment in InfoCom in July 1992. Ten months later, a new account of $250,000 was created with InfoCom for Mrs. Marzook.
Mr. Marzook, speaking to The Associated Press from Syria, denied that InfoCom ever financed the Hamas movement and dismissed any ties between the two.
"The next few days will prove that all their allegations are null and void and have no legal foundations," he said.
The approach to pursuing criminal charges, Mr. Defenbaugh said, represented a break from longstanding FBI practice to monitor suspected terrorist fronts rather than prosecute them.
"Always before this, we would do a lot of these things as intelligence cases, and you end up playing chess with them all the time and get no results," Mr. Defenbaugh said.
His attitude toward suspected fronts like the foundation, he said, was: "They are supporting terrorism, let's go and prove it. Let's poke them back in the eye and see what happens."
An FBI memorandum dated one month before the government's December 2001 closure of Holy Land Foundation revealed that the bureau had been investigating the charity since at least October 1993.
The earliest date cited in the memo referred to a meeting of suspected Hamas leaders in Philadelphia. Among the participants was Mr. Elashi, the memo stated.
The memo, which described the use of wiretaps, informants and other intelligence sources, concluded that the foundation had been designated by top Hamas officials as the movement's primary fund-raiser in the United States.
Mr. Defenbaugh said he was not surprised it had taken a year since a federal terrorism task force searched InfoCom to return indictments against the company and its owners.
As more of the truckloads of documents seized from the company are analyzed, he said, there may be more action taken.
"We indicted from those search warrants," he said. "That clearly does not mean that the investigation is over with."
Mr. Marzook said he expected the eventual release of the Elashi brothers, saying there was no evidence to back up the charges against them. "They [the brothers] have no relation whatsoever to all these issues.
"These are political rather than legal measures addressed against Arabs and Muslims in the United States," said Mr. Marzook, who is deputy of the Hamas political office in Damascus.
E-mail smcgonigle@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/stories/122002dnmetinfocom.5da97.htmlI do not give a rip if they softly cry big tears about being arrested for shipping goods to terrorists. I would have cared if they cried tears about the World Trade Center. That would have shown compassion, crying after you are arrested for felonys is crying for yourself because you got caught.
Give it a rest sister, we realy do not care if you are a Moslem, we just dislike Killers and those who help them. Just because you think your prophet says murdering infidels is a good thing, does not give you the freedom to practice your religion on us. The freedom to choose which religion you practice is not a get out of jail free card when you break the law.
Rastafarians do not get to smoke dope in public, Islamics should not be allowed to murder the public. They are not arrested for being Moslems, they are arrested for breaking the law. Get over it and QUIT WHINING.
Is this nonprofit on Guidestar.org ? You know, some of these nonprofits have to identify all contributors. Quite a resource of terrorist supporters. Would likely point to every community in the US.
