Another ‘case’ against a ‘terrorist’ craters
As bad as things have gotten, every once in a while - in the rare instance when a case goes to trial - justice is actually served.
In this case, it was served with crushing irony against a group of fanatics who think that they can criminalize any and all opposition to their illegal and immoral occupation.
Too bad, for zionists, you can't BUY JURORS like you can BUY politicians.
Mohammed Salah, the only U.S. citizen to be designated an international terrorist, was acquitted Thursday of terrorism-related charges - a rejection of the federal government's claim that he helped lead the militant Palestinian group Hamas.The dramatic conclusion of Salah's three-month trial capped a novel-worthy story 14 years in the making.
Salah was captured by Israeli authorities in 1993 and accused of serving as a Hamas military commander, and he’s been dealing with the aftershocks ever since.
Salah, 53, of Bridgeview, was convicted of lesser charges of obstruction of justice for lying about his alleged Hamas links in a 2000 lawsuit. But he brushed that aside and basked in the glow of beating the main charge of racketeering conspiracy, which could have landed him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Tears streaming down his face, he bear-hugged defense attorneys and vigorously shook hands with dozens of well-wishers and spectators.
Top officials of the FBI and U.S. attorney's offices in Chicago huddled quietly and watched the celebration unfold.
"We are not terrorists," Salah said afterward in the teeming courthouse lobby with his 8-year-old son Ibrahim perched on his shoulders. "We are a great people who are helping the United States. We just have to thank our lawyers and everyone else. I have to thank everyone who helped my family put food on the table."
Salah's co-defendant, former university professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar, of Virginia, also was acquitted of racketeering charges but convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal contempt.
The lesser charges against Ashqar stem from his refusal to testify about Hamas before a federal grand jury despite a grant of immunity.
Both men remain free on bond. They’re scheduled to be sentenced June 15. Defense attorneys said they plan on requesting probation for them.
The trial, which began in October, touched on the ancient blood feud between Arabs and Jews and immersed jurors in a world of shadowy Israeli intelligence agents, suicide bombings, illicit money-runners and shifty overseas operatives speaking in code.
That, no doubt, left a bad taste in their mouth.
"We've never prosecuted a case like this," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro said after the verdict. "I don't know if there will ever be another case prosecuted in this district with facts like these."
In an indictment announced in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, Salah was accused of delivering laundered money to Hamas militants in the Occupied Territories and recruiting a pair of local men for terrorist training.
Ashqar faced allegations that he served as a behind-the-scenes Hamas strategist and communications link between operatives in the U.S. and abroad.
Hamas, which is dedicated to the eradication of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state, is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Salah and Ashqar, both natives of the Occupied Territories, were never directly tied to any violence, but they were accused of breaking U.S. laws to help Hamas.
The case against Salah was built around a series of incriminating statements he gave to agents of Israel’s Shin Bet security service after his capture at a military checkpoint in January 1993.
He was held without charges and interrogated over a period of nearly two months in Israel -- and defense attorneys repeatedly told jurors during the trial that Salah was tortured into saying what the Shin Bet wanted to hear.
A pair of Shin Bet agents involved in the interrogation, testifying under fake names in a courtroom cleared of the public, [outrageous!] insisted that Salah’s confession was not coerced. But prosecutors admitted the Shin Bet in the early 1990s generally used harsh interrogation tactics considered by many human-rights observers to be torture.
The Salah prosecution drew the ire of civil rights activists and the Muslim community centered around the Bridgeview mosque where he has long worshipped.
Salah’s alleged work for Hamas took place well over a decade ago, and he ultimately spent nearly five years in an Israeli prison for it. A charge that Salah specifically supported terrorism was dismissed by prosecutors shortly before trial.
You can't prove what you have no evidence for.
The racketeering charge alleged that Salah kept his 1990s-era Hamas status intact by lying in his written response to a 2000 lawsuit that was filed by the parents of a Jewish teen killed in a West Bank terrorist attack.
Critics have characterized the case alternately as a heavy-handed appeasement of Israel, a desperate bid to prosecute a terrorism case in the post-9/11 world, or both.
Ashqar defense attorney William Moffitt -- who compared his client to famous freedom fighters such as Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X -- told jurors there should be nothing illegal about resisting an armed occupation. [what a hero!]
The long-running violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and who’s most to blame for it, was a constant theme throughout the trial. While prosecution witnesses testified about the horror of Hamas suicide bombings, defense witnesses said many more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli soldiers in the conflict and described the deplorable living conditions in the Occupied Territories.
"Maybe the government will get it through its head that this conflict is not going to be settled in the criminal courts of the United States," Moffitt said.
Prosecutors praised the jurors, who deliberated for 14 days, for their hard work and said the fact that both defendants were convicted of something means the government didn’t lose the case.
"We believe that we proved our case beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury disagreed," Shapiro said. "We are still convinced of what we alleged in this case." [sore losers] After the verdict, jurors told the judge they didn't want to meet with reporters and issued a joint statement saying they based their verdict "solely on the facts as applied to the law."
Several jurors reached at home Thursday evening declined to comment. Hickory Hills resident Tahanee Hasan, whose father is a friend of Salah, said she has attended the trial since November.
A network of phone trees was set up to alert Salah's supporters that a verdict had been reached, and they began streaming toward the downtown Dirksen Federal Building after learning of it Thursday afternoon.
"Our entire community has been watching this," Hasan said.
As it was for much of the trial, the hallway outside U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve's 12th-floor courtroom was packed with spectators hoping to snag a seat inside. Salah, who was allowed to await the verdict at home, warmly greeted the crowd when he arrived.
"You always have hope," he said quietly, hands spread, before entering the hushed courtroom to learn his fate.
A muted exclamation rose from the courtroom gallery when the "not guilty" verdict on the first count of the indictment was read. The mood became subdued when guilty verdicts on the remaining minor charges were read, but defense attorneys quickly declared victory after jurors filed out.
"This is a great day for justice," attorney Michael Deutsch said. "I think the jury rejected this idea that you can criminalize a political movement through (racketeering laws)."
Salah supporters swarmed the lobby of the courthouse for more than an hour after the verdict and were gradually herded outside.
Before heading home, Salah and about a dozen others arranged themselves in two rows - men in the first row, women in the second - and knelt on the snowy granite tarmac beside the federal building to pray.
"This case is not just for Muslims; it's for everyone," Salah shouted as the last few supporters and onlookers slipped away afterward. "We love you all."
It doesn't happen often, but this victory brought tears to my eyes.
Look out, israel - America is fed up and very soon you'll be out on the street looking for a new donor!
... prosecuting Irish Americans for supporting the IRA. Or prosecuting Basques for supporting ETA. At least not to my knowledge. Yet Palestinians are prosecuted for supporting Hamas/Fateh. It's good that they couldn't stick 'terror' on these guys, but they shouldn't have been tried in the first place, and in which other trial in America were accusers allowed to make statements anonymously without jurors present?!!!
Unbelievable! This is Israel and the American Zionists pursuing their enemies in America's courts.
Immediately following the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, the U.S. government hired an Egyptian named Osama Eldawoody to frequent Muslim neighborhoods and tell Muslims that American soldiers were raping Iraqi girls. The govermnment paid Eldawoody over 100,000 tax dollars for this. Eldawoody was wearing a wire, and tried to talk various Muslims into bombing the USA. Everyone refused until Eldawoody met a lonely 24-year-old Pakistani immigrant boy named Shahawar Matin Siraj, who became angry when he heard about the rapes. Siraj agreed that Muslims should retaliate, but he insisted that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. Then he immediately backed out, saying he wanted to talk to his parents. His voice was recorded by the wire on Eldawoody, and Siraj was brought before a militant Jewish judge. Siraj, the young Pakistani, had no connection with any terrorist group. Nonetheless, the Zionist judge (Nina Gershon) sentenced him to 30 years. (This was in Zionist-controlled New York City.) On the day of sentencing, another person was sentenced in Germany for taking part in 9-11, but only got 15 years. Siraj had no previous criminal record. His parents attended the whole trial, pleading for leniency. Immediately after sentencing, the mother and father were arrested, as was Siraj’s sister, all on unspecified charges that had no connection with Siraj.
Note to Zionist Jews who read this . . .your day is coming. Retribution will be sudden and merciless. Millions of you will be liquidated and sent back to your master (Satan).
Oh yes, it’s coming . . .
... the Pakistani youth entrapped?
This is a typical story, and happened in the 1993 WTC bombing. Back then an Egyptian intelligence agent working for the FBI and the Kahane family was talking about American atrocities and trying to get the Arabs he was conversing with to say 'self-implicating' things.
Please give me sources on this more recent story, I'd like to read into it.
In answer to your query, here is the first place I saw this story mentioned...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/akers/akers56.html