Posted on 04/23/2003 9:00:48 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Richardson charity seeks assets
Holy Land asks court to toss ruling that upheld freezing of finances
04/23/2003
WASHINGTON – The Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development urged a federal appeals court Tuesday to throw out a ruling that upheld a freeze on the organization's financial assets.
The Muslim charity denied government accusations that it donated money or provided services to Hamas, considered a foreign terrorist group by the State Department. The group said it provides relief to refugees, orphans and victims of human and natural disasters.
"We want to make charitable and humanitarian contributions," John Cline, a Holy Land attorney, told a panel of judges before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Cline alleged that the government violated the group's constitutional rights to a trial, freedom of religion and speech, and protection against unwarranted searches and seizures when the Treasury Department froze the group's assets and closed its offices in a December 2001 raid.
A federal judge last summer upheld the department's decision to hold the group's money and declare it linked to terrorism. The judge also ruled that Holy Land may challenge the government's search of its property.
Mr. Cline told judges that using an administrative procedure to seize Holy Land's offices denied the charity proper notice of the investigation and the chance to defend itself. He said the group also did not get a chance to cross-examine witnesses the government used against the organization.
Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter said agents moved under special circumstances allowed in the Bush administration's fight against global terrorism, based on overwhelming evidence linking Holy Land to Hamas.
"We are dealing with a foreign-relations national security issue," Mr. Letter said.
According to court documents, "Holy Land's funds and other personal property are precisely the sort of transient, highly mobile assets that could easily and quickly be removed to another jurisdiction, destroyed, or concealed, if advance warning were given."
Holy Land, which touts itself as the largest U.S.-based Muslim charity, was shut down by the Treasury Department as part of a terrorism investigation. Government officials say their conservative estimate is that Hamas has raised several million dollars in the United States during the last decade.
Holy Land leaders have denied the charges.
Are these folks at the Holy Land Foundation innocent of Terror support and the government is wrongly singling them out? Are they an honest and sincere charity organization? . . .
Mr. Cline alleged that the government violated the group's constitutional rights to a trial, freedom of religion and speech, and protection against unwarranted searches and seizures when the Treasury Department froze the group's assets and closed its offices in a December 2001 raid.
A federal judge last summer upheld the department's decision to hold the group's money and declare it linked to terrorism. The judge also ruled that Holy Land may challenge the government's search of its property.
Mr. Cline told judges that using an administrative procedure to seize Holy Land's offices denied the charity proper notice of the investigation and the chance to defend itself. He said the group also did not get a chance to cross-examine witnesses the government used against the organization.
Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter said agents moved under special circumstances allowed in the Bush administration's fight against global terrorism, based on overwhelming evidence linking Holy Land to Hamas.
Oh, welcome to FreeRepublic.com too, btw !
Are these folks at the Holy Land Foundation innocent of Terror support and the government is wrongly singling them out? Are they an honest and sincere charity organization? . . .
Not unless you think Hamas is not a terrorist organization.
"In December, 2001, the assets of the HLF in America were frozen by presidential order. According to a memo dated November 5 by FBI Assistant Director Dale L. Watson, the FBI had been gathering evidence of HLF's ties to Hamas since 1993, and "a majority of the funds collected by the HLFRD (Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development) are used to support HAMAS activities in the Middle East.""In was all carefully planned. At a meeting in October 1993 at a Marriott hotel in Philadelphia that the FBI secretly recorded, five HAMAS leaders met with the top three executives of HLF: Shukri Abu Baker, the chief executive, Haitham Maghawri, the executive director, and Ghassan Elashi, the chairman. As Watson summarized, "It was decided that most or almost all of the funds collected in the future should be directed to enhance the Islamic Resistance Movement and to weaken the self-rule government," i.e. what later became the Palestinian Authority."Holy War efforts should be supported by increasing spending on the injured, the prisoners and their families." According to the FBI, the participants agreed that "In the United States, they could raise funds, propagate their political goals, affect public opinion, and influence decision-making of the U.S. government."One reliable FBI source reported that at a 1994 IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine) conference in California, the HLF's CEO, Shukri Abu Baker, was introduced to the audience as a senior vice president of HAMAS."-- Steven Emerson, "America Jihad," pp. 89-90.
Related story: Muslim Charity Fights Closure -- Appellate Panel Is Told That Holy Land Foundation Didn't Fund Hamas
Excerpt from your link:These guys have been aiding Hamas/Terrorists for years! Keep them shut down and send them to prison !!The charity's co-founder and board chairman, Ghassan Elashi, was arrested along with his three brothers two weeks after the charity was shut down. A 33-count indictment charges that their Internet services company, which had offices across the street from Holy Land, hid more than $250,000 in investments from Mousa Abu Marzook, a deputy political leader of Hamas in Syria. Elashi is awaiting trial.
Holy Land sued in U.S. District Court here, seeking a preliminary injunction. It contended that the government seized its assets without notice, a hearing or a warrant, or any factual basis that the organization supported Hamas.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler agreed the seizure had been carried out without a warrant, a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but ruled that national security concerns outweighed those protections. Rejecting every other claim raised by the charity, she ruled that the government's seven-volume, 3,130-page record showed ample evidence that Holy Land sent money to Hamas.
"The record contains a December 1988 and a December 1989 publication issued by Hamas. Both publications request that tax-deductible donations be sent to OLF, HLF's former corporate name," she wrote. Kessler also concluded that there was abundant evidence that Holy Land officials met with Hamas leaders and that the charity's Jerusalem office "acted on behalf of Hamas."
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Cline said yesterday that a "minuscule" amount of money had been given to orphans or families of suicide bombers, and only because the organization gave aid to thousands of needy people. "Those families were not designated for support," he said.
But Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has seen the government's case, described it as "overwhelming."
"They have funded families of suicide bombers, they've sent money to charities run by Hamas members, both of which build grass-roots support for Hamas," he said. "There's a long and varied matrix of relationships in which Holy Land has supported Hamas activity."
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