Federal Judge Agrees: CAIR Tied to Hamas
November 22, 2010
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2340/federal-judge-agrees-cair-tied-to-hamas
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been connected to the terrorist organization Hamas, a federal judge said in a July 2009 ruling unsealed last week.
"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." (see the IPTs earlier coverage of the decision to publish the list here).
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."
