CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Government Finally Reaches the Holy Land in Complex Case of Providing Financial Support to Terrorist

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

America has a disposition toward war. The nation was created through war, and except for brief periods of respite, America has been at war with itself and other countries throughout its history. When not at war with other nations, America has found a need to declare “war” on one social ill after another, particularly over the last five decades. Beginning with President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” through President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” following 9/11, government officials have consistently used a war slogan to justify one social crusade after another.

In 2007 we wrote in this column (under the title “The Holy Land Foundation Verdict”) about the efforts of the Bush administration, as part of its “war on terror,” to convict the Holy Land Foundation of Texas for terrorism-related activities. We will revisit some of the historical background of that column as a lead into this one.

Under its original name Occupied Land Fund, the Holy Land Foundation was established in California in 1989 by Ghassan Elashi and other Palestinian Activists. The purpose of the Foundation was to provide assistance to Palestinians displaced by a Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The uprising became known as the “intifada.” The most aggressive resistance in the intifada came from the Iranian-backed organization called Hamas which had been established in 1987. The political leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook, was married to Elashi’s cousin.

Three years later, in 1992, Holy Land moved its headquarters to Richardson, Texas. The Foundation came under the scrutiny of the governments of the United States and Israel the following year. An Illinois businessman named Muhammad Salah detained in Israel informed authorities that Holy Land, which had become America’s largest Muslim charity, was actually a front for Hamas. While he later claimed that he had provided information to the Israelis under torture, he told the authorities that Marzook, who was living in the U.S. at the time, had actually funded the creation of Holy Land with hundreds of thousands of dollars of start-up money. (more…)