According To Unsealed Court Ruling, Federal Judge Agrees: CAIR Tied To Hamas

Steve Emerson writes about the events leading to the unsealing of the court ruling indicating the evidence that CAIR is tied to Hamas.

In the 2008 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), 5 former HLF officials were convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. In that trial, CAIR was one of those groups listed--along with Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT)--as being unindicted co-conspirators.

CAIR, ISNA and NAIT wanted claims of their ties to Hamas removed and the record sealed. On July 1, 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis ruled that while their inclusion on the list of unindicted co-conspirators should not have been made public--but denied their request to have references to the groups removed from the record because of the strength of the evidence.

That ruling by Judge Soltis was under seal until recently.


That is when NAIT asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to unseal the order and strike any references tying the organization to Hamas. While the court agreed to unseal the lower court ruling, it refused to strike Judge Solis' explanation that the groups were tied to Hamas.

So thanks to NAIT, we have access to Judge Soltis' ruling, including the following:

The Government identifies four portions of the record from the first trial that purportedly establish that CAIR was a “joint venturer and coconspirator”:

(1) a Government exhibit showing the objective of the [U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s] Palestine Committee is to support Hamas;
(2) a Government exhibit showing that CAIR founder Omar Ahmad is part of the
Palestine Committee and [Hamas senior member] Mousa Abu Marzook is its head;
(3) a Government exhibit listing CAIR as part of the Palestine Committee; and
(4) the testimony of Special Agent Lara Burns and accompanying exhibits placing the CAIR founder at the 1993 Philadelphia conference and describing the CAIR founder’s mediation of a dispute between HLF and Ashqar over Hamas fundraising. (Resp. at 12-13.)

The Government does not mention any occasion where it used the 801(d)(2)(E) hearsay exception to introduce a statement of CAIR. The four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas; however, even if the proverbial “cat was let out of the bag” at trial, there is an ongoing injury that will persist as long as the public has ready access to the Government’s list of unindicted co-conspirators.

...Finally, CAIR, NAIT [North American Islamic Trust] and ISNA [Islamic Society of North America] ask the Court to strike their names from any public document filed or issued by the government. (Mot. at 6.) While it is clear from the Briggs line of cases that the Government should have originally filed the unindicted co-conspirators’ names under seal, the Court declines to strike CAIR, ISNA and NAIT’s names from those documents. The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF [Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development], the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas. While the Court recognizes that the evidence produced by the Government largely predates the HLF designation date, the evidence is nonetheless sufficient to show the association of these entities with HLF, IAP, and Hamas. See U.S. v. Ladd, 218 F.3d at 704-05 (“the Government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a conspiracy existed”). Thus, maintaining the names of the entities on the List is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the Government.

There is of course one point on which Judge Solis has thus far been proven wrong--"there is an ongoing injury that will persist as long as the public has ready access to the Government’s list of unindicted co-conspirators." On the contrary, CAIR continues to have no problem presenting itself as merely an advocate of Muslim rights.

But we continue to hope that will change.

Here is the complete text of Judge Soltis's ruling:
Click here for full page view.


Technorati Tag: CAIR and Terrorism and Hamas.