[Winstonm]

Quote

Shukri Abu Baker, 50, and Ghassan Elashi, 55, were among the five members of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development sentenced to prison on Wednesday.

The men and Holy Land were convicted in November on 108 charges, following a mistrial in 2007 in which the government failed to convince jurors that the charity sent more than $12 million (£7.5 million) to Hamas.

Mufid Abdulqader, 49, was sentenced to 20 years on three conspiracy counts. Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, got 15 years for one count of conspiracy to support a terrorist organisation. Abdulrahman Odeh was sentenced to 15 years for three conspiracy counts.

The Holy Land leaders were convicted on charges ranging from supporting a terrorist organisation to money laundering and tax fraud. The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas. Holy Land itself was convicted of 32 counts.

Somehow, this legal victory in the war on terror doesn't make me feel the least bit safer.

[mike777]

Winstonm, on May 27 2009, 09:44 PM, said:

Quote

Shukri Abu Baker, 50, and Ghassan Elashi, 55, were among the five members of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development sentenced to prison on Wednesday.

The men and Holy Land were convicted in November on 108 charges, following a mistrial in 2007 in which the government failed to convince jurors that the charity sent more than $12 million (£7.5 million) to Hamas.

Mufid Abdulqader, 49, was sentenced to 20 years on three conspiracy counts. Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, got 15 years for one count of conspiracy to support a terrorist organisation. Abdulrahman Odeh was sentenced to 15 years for three conspiracy counts.

The Holy Land leaders were convicted on charges ranging from supporting a terrorist organisation to money laundering and tax fraud. The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas. Holy Land itself was convicted of 32 counts.

Somehow, this legal victory in the war on terror doesn't make me feel the least bit safer.

"Somehow, this legal victory in the war on terror doesn't make me feel the least bit safer"


Fair enough after this legal court victory .....your feeling of safety was not increased.

[barmar]

From nytimes.com:

Quote

Prosecutors said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients may have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

So I guess it's a matter of which side you believe. Obviously, the jury believed the prosecution

[Trinidad]

Things went wrong when the West first convinced Hamas to participate in the elections and then labeled them a terrorist organization after they had won them.

Rik

[helene_t]

Where did the trial take place? USA or Israel or somewhere else?

[Al_U_Card]

Jesus will fix it all when he comes back

[Winstonm]

barmar, on May 28 2009, 02:17 AM, said:

From nytimes.com:

Quote

Prosecutors said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients may have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

So I guess it's a matter of which side you believe. Obviously, the jury believed the prosecution

I venture that the jury didn't come to that conclusion, but was instructed by the judge to determine only if the law had been violated, i.e., money had gone to Hamas.

[Winstonm]

helene_t, on May 28 2009, 05:19 AM, said:

Where did the trial take place? USA or Israel or somewhere else?

U.S.

This was a violation of U.S. law.

[jonottawa]

They hate us for our freedom and stuff. USA! USA!

I'd protest this decision, but I'm already booked at the 'sodomy is a constitutional right' rally this weekend, sorry.

[Lobowolf]

Winstonm, on May 28 2009, 07:25 PM, said:

I venture that the jury didn't come to that conclusion, but was instructed by the judge to determine only if the law had been violated, i.e., money had gone to Hamas.

This reflects a common misconception (one that as a criminal defense attorney, Ken could address better than I, but I can outline the broad strokes). The (apparent) misconception is that the "act" (providing the money) = the "crime." Virtually always (exception coming at the end of the article), the state of mind of the defendant is not just a potentially mitigating circumstance, it's an element of the crime as well. That is to say, absent a particular state of mind, no crime may have taken place. In general, there are a few main states of mind the law recognizes (from most culpable to least culpable):

*Intentionally* (I burned the house and killed you specifically because you were in it, and I wanted to kill you)
*knowingly* (I burned down the house because I wanted to collect the insurance. I knew you were in it, and I wish you hadn't been, but I'm busy the rest of the week, so I had to burn it down tonight.
*recklessly* (I burned down the house knowing someone might very well have been in it, but I didn't actually know. Regardless, I didn't care)
*negligently* (I burned down the house, and it never occurred to me that someone might have been in it, but it would have occurred to a reasonable person).

If you don't have the required mental state, you haven't committed the crime. A couple of specific examples - Burglary is (essentially) breaking into to a place with the intent of committing a felony. Let's say you and I are standing in front of adjacent buildings, and we each break a window and enter. My plan is to steal a few computers. Your plan is to get some shelter and sleep (it's raining). As soon as we enter, we each decide it's a bad idea, so we leave. Even though we've DONE the exact same thing, I've committed burglary; you haven't.

Attempted murder requires a more culpable mental state than murder. You can recklessly be guilty of murder (Let's say you enter a bank to rob it, and you spin around in a 360, firing a few shots for crowd control purposes. One of them hits someone, and that person dies. You didn't try to kill someone, and you didn't know that someone would die, but you knew someone COULD die, and you didn't care. That's recklessness, and it's enough for murder. But if a bullet hits someone at random, and that person DOESN'T die, it's not attempted murder. You weren't trying to kill him. Attempted murder requires a heightened mental state of culpability.

That's why if you're at a restaurant, and you take someone else's identical-in- appearance coat, you haven't committed any sort of theft. "Taking coat" doesn't = "Theft." "Taking coat" PLUS "Intending to permanently deprive owner of coat" = Theft.

Getting back to the case at issue, without looking up the material support statute, it's almost certain that it has a mental state requirement...most likely that the defendant knew but didn't care that the money might fund terrorism.

The exception I alluded to above is for "strict liability" crimes - there ARE some crimes where the mental state doesn't matter. And example would be statutory rape. It doesn't matter whether you checked 3 forms of I.D. and believed to an extent that wasn't even negligent that she was 18. If she wasn't, it's on you. No mental state required.

Strict liability crimes, though, are few and far between. Aside from that, there's a pretty good clue that this isn't one of them - if the mental state of the defendant wasn't relevant, the argument wouldn't have been permitted to be made in front of the jury. It would be highly prejudicial to the prosecution, and completely irrelevant.

So it's an extremely safe bet that "money going to Hamas" doesn't = "law has been violated."

Law has been violated = "Money going to a terrorist organization" (there's a list) PLUS "Defendant wanted (or knew but didn't care that) money to go to a terrorist organization"

[Winstonm]

Quote

So it's an extremely safe bet that "money going to Hamas" doesn't = "law has been violated."

Your point is well-taken that intent is an inherent part of a crime; however, in this instance the only intent that needed to be shown was that the money was intended for Hamas - any argument about terrorism-support or non-terrorism support is moot.

I would still say the question for the jury was simply this: was money intentionally sent to Hamas? - nothing more.

If it was, then they are guilty, even if Hamas did nothing with the money other than build a school.

[Lobowolf]

Yes, the mental state requirement can be satisfied by an awareness that the money is going to Hamas. That makes perfect sense to me; I think if you're going to take the other side, the only real shot is whether the organization properly belongs on the list of terrorist organizations. If an organization has two branches, say, bomb-making and school-building, the fact of the matter is that donations to one fund both. If you use a Lottery to fund education, in real-life, what happens is, money previously budgeted to education gets re-allocated to whatever the officials want to allocate it to, know that they know that Xe ducation funding level will be met by the Lottery. Similarly, if you're in the business of either bomb-making or school-building, and you spend your money on both, and tens of millions of dollars comes into your school program, then in the next budget meeting, you have a lot of money freed up to make bombs.

So, I guess you could argue whether there should be a law against funding terrorist organizations. And I guess you could argue whether Hamas should be labeled a terrorist organization. But I think that if you accept the status quo answers to both of those questions, the defense, "Gee, I just wanted to build schools and hospitals" is either naive or intellectually dishonest. Of course, we have no idea what evidence was introduced, but on a gut reaction level, I find it pretty implausible.

So if you're playing along at home kids, and you can't decide which charitable organization to pledge your relief dollars to, remember...don't pick the one(s) run by Hamas.

Material support laws are interesting (like the case of the taxi driver taking an Al Qaeda guy to the airport to make his getaway). I had to draft one for a criminal law final.

[Winstonm]

My argument was against the conclusion of this post:

Quote

Prosecutors said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients may have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

So I guess it's a matter of which side you believe. Obviously, the jury believed the prosecutor

What I am saying is the above is absolutely inaccurate - that because Hamas is on the terrorism list the only question presented to the jury was whether or not this group intentionally gave money to Hamas. The jury did not find them guilty of sponsoring terrorism - they were found guilty of purposefully giving money to Hamas.

In other words, terrorism support or non-support was irrelevant to the decision.

This is from the original post:

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas.

I am a reasonable person. If someone can make a valid argument against a position I hold I certainly will listen and evaluate and on occasion change my mind.

What tires me is blind loyalty, blind trust, sloganeering, and spin. When it occurs I have to call it out for what it is: laziness.

That's why I have gone round and round with this issue. You cannot justify bad law by simply claiming "the jury agreed", when the verdict had no bearing on the claims you are making.

It would be like saying that the L.A. police is bigoted and framed the defendant, then pointing to the O.J. Simpson verdict and saying, "see, the jury agreed".

[Lobowolf]

Winstonm, on May 30 2009, 11:07 AM, said:

My argument was against the conclusion of this post:

Quote

Prosecutors said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients may have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

So I guess it's a matter of which side you believe. Obviously, the jury believed the prosecutor

What I am saying is the above is absolutely inaccurate - that because Hamas is on the terrorism list the only question presented to the jury was whether or not this group intentionally gave money to Hamas. The jury did not find them guilty of sponsoring terrorism - they were found guilty of purposefully giving money to Hamas.

In other words, terrorism support or non-support was irrelevant to the decision.

This is from the original post:

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas.

I am a reasonable person. If someone can make a valid argument against a position I hold I certainly will listen and evaluate and on occasion change my mind.

What tires me is blind loyalty, blind trust, sloganeering, and spin. When it occurs I have to call it out for what it is: laziness.

That's why I have gone round and round with this issue. You cannot justify bad law by simply claiming "the jury agreed", when the verdict had no bearing on the claims you are making.

It would be like saying that the L.A. police is bigoted and framed the defendant, then pointing to the O.J. Simpson verdict and saying, "see, the jury agreed".

It wasn't clear to me from the original post that the defendants knew that the organizations were controlled by Hamas. So the argument would be over whether they knew that "Acme Middle East Relief" was a terrorist organization, or a Hamas subsidiary, or whatever.

But again, the real questions (IMO) are whether
A) Hamas is legitimately designated as a terrorist organization; and
Whether is should be illegal to support terrorist organizations.

If the answer to both of those questions is yes, there's no spinning a bad law here. If you give them 12 million dollars, you're supporting a terrorist organization. "Gee, I thought they were just going to build schools and hospitals" is a defense for children and law students.

[Winstonm]

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas.

I could be wrong, but I read this a fairly straightforward that the conviction was based on monetary support of programs that are controlled by Hamas.

That is far different than "supporting terrorism".

I was raised in a religion that forbade going to movies. The logic behind the ban was expressed like this: even if you go to a "clean" movie, the profits may be used by the same group to later make a "dirty" movie.

The rationale seems to me to be equally flawed in both cases.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on May 30 2009, 01:00 PM, said:

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas.

I could be wrong, but I read this a fairly straightforward that the conviction was based on monetary support of programs that are controlled by Hamas.

That is far different than "supporting terrorism".

yes, this is your contention... lobo's (and perhaps the prosecution's) is that they're one in the same

[Winstonm]

luke warm, on May 31 2009, 09:20 AM, said:

Winstonm, on May 30 2009, 01:00 PM, said:

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes the government says are controlled by Hamas.

I could be wrong, but I read this a fairly straightforward that the conviction was based on monetary support of programs that are controlled by Hamas.

That is far different than "supporting terrorism".

yes, this is your contention... lobo's (and perhaps the prosecution's) is that they're one in the same

Actually, the debate issue was posted by Barmar who claimed that the jury agreed with the prosecution that these people supported terrorism.

My position is that any support of or non-support of terrorism was moot, therefore the jury could not have made a finding that terrorism was supported - the only question for the jury was whether or not this group knowingly provided monetary assistance to Hamas.

The verdict was that they were guilty of raising and giving money to Hamas. There was no burden of proof on the prosecution to prove any support of terrorism.

If the government declared Jerry's Kids to be a terrorist organization, the firemen who line the intersections collecting money in boots on Labor Day would be guilty of the same crime.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on May 31 2009, 10:28 AM, said:

Actually, the debate issue was posted by Barmar who claimed that the jury agreed with the prosecution that these people supported terrorism.

My position is that any support of or non-support of terrorism was moot, therefore the jury could not have made a finding that terrorism was supported - the only question for the jury was whether or not this group knowingly provided monetary assistance to Hamas. The verdict was that they were guilty of raising and giving money to Hamas.  There was no burden of proof on the prosecution to prove any support of terrorism.

i guess this is where i get confused... if hamas is defined as a terrorist organization, then money given to them (for whatever reason) is money given to a terrorist org... if that in itself is illegal, and if that's what was done ...

Quote

If the government declared Jerry's Kids to be a terrorist organization, the firemen who line the intersections collecting money in boots on Labor Day would be guilty of the same crime.

okay... and?

[Winstonm]

Someone has reading and comprehension problems - it could be me. This is the post I take exception to: (my emphasis added)

Quote

From nytimes.com:
QUOTE
Prosecutors said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients may have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

So I guess it's a matter of which side you believe. Obviously, the jury believed the prosecution

The underlined passages are irrelevant. It is a crime to support Hamas, regardless. The only burden of proof for the prosecutions was whether or not money was purposefully given to Hamas, end of story.

Barmar's quotes and conclusion made the inference that the jury believed that the group supported terrorism and that their guilty verdict was based on a belief in the prosecution's claims about support of terrorism. That is simply inaccurate. The jury was not asked to make a decision concerning support of terrorism - the law is already clear that Hamas is deemed a terrorist organization - and that is the entire point of contention with that post that I have now, have had before, and once again have restated.

Lobowolf made the correct point that the secondary discussion is whether or not Hamas should be classified as a terrorist organization.

I would say this verdict would support a viewpoint of a less broad category, as these men have been sent to prison for years for giving money for a humanitarian cause, and not being able to guarantee that the money or some of the money gets diverted to armed resistance.

[Winstonm]

Quote

i guess this is where i get confused... if hamas is defined as a terrorist organization, then money given to them (for whatever reason) is money given to a terrorist org... if that in itself is illegal, and if that's what was done

If you equate this....

Quote

The group was not accused of violence, but of bankrolling schools and social welfare programmes.....

...

....to support of terrorism, then it seems to me you must believe educated and healthy Palestinians to be a threat.

Me? I guess I am either naive or stupid - I happen to believe that increasing the educational levels and social welfare programs of Palestinians would go a long way toward deescalating the hostilities.

The U.S. government (as well as other governments) provides educational services, social services, and military operations for its people; Hamas, as the elected leaders of the Palestinian non-state, provide the same services for its people - yet Hamas is labeled terrorist.

Seems to me the terrorist label is a politically motivated tool rather than due to any genuine threat. If so, then the convictions under the terrorism claims are political decisions - and thus have more in keeping with Gulags than U.S. prisons.