The very public indictment, prosecution and trial of leading American Muslim organisations and persons reveal a larger agenda at work, writes Abdus Sattar Ghazali*
This week’s failure to win any convictions against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) — once the largest Muslim charity in the US — was the third show-trial of Muslims in post-9/ 11 America. In February this year, a federal jury in Chicago acquitted Mohamed Salah and his co- defendant Abdel-Halim Ashqar of supporting terrorism financing. Salah was charged with “terrorism” based upon a confession extracted by torture in an Israeli jail. In December 2005, former college professor Sami Al-Arian was acquitted on eight counts of aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After a six- month trial, jurors deadlocked on nine other counts.
What is common in the three major trials? The three cases have been touted by the Bush administration as a major breakthrough in disrupting “terror financing cells”. The Holy Land case was considered so significant that President George Bush personally announced the seizure of its assets in December 2001. He made this announcement at a press conference in the Rose Garden four days after a request from then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. The president said that money raised by the group, “is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers”.