Federal Judge Agrees: CAIR Tied to Hamas

By Steven Emerson

Jewish World Review Nov. 23, 2010/16 Kislev, 5771
[EXCERPTS]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been connected to the terrorist organization Hamas, a federal judge said in a July 2009 ruling just unsealed.

"The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas," U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis said in the July 1, 2009, ruling.

CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) had protested to Solis that they were incorrectly named as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. Among the allegations, HLF was accused of having provided more than $12 million to Hamas. After a 2007 mistrial, five former HLF officials convicted on 108 counts, ranging from money laundering to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Following the trial, CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT have argued that their inclusion on the list injured their standing in the community, and their image. They wanted their ties to Hamas removed from the trial records and the list sealed.
Solis agreed the list should not have been made public, saying that doing so violated the Fifth Amendment rights of the listed individuals and organizations. Criticizing the decision to publish the list, the judge explained that CAIR has been subjected to "annoyance, ridicule, scorn, and a loss of reputation in the community."

However, Solis refused to remove references to CAIR and the other groups from the trial record. That's because the government introduced extensive evidence tying CAIR to Hamas. "The public," he wrote, "may make its own judgment from evidence presented at trial."

Solis filed his July 2009 ruling under seal, and until recently, it was unclear what information was actually contained in the order.

[....]

"CAIR's status as a co-conspirator is a matter of public record," Solis explained. Examining the trial proceedings, he recounted the numerous ties between ISNA, NAIT, and CAIR.

During the trial, the government introduced documents detailing the Muslim Brotherhood's beginnings in the United States. Amongst those was the May 22, 1991, "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," authored by Mohamed Akram. The memorandum includes a section titled "Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America" which states that the work of the Ikhwan in the United States is a "kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions."

Also contained in the document was a list of the Muslim Brotherhood's "organizations and the organizations of our friends," which includes ISNA, NAIT, the Occupied Land Fund (HLFs former name, and others.
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