Here is an excerpt from part 2 of the Investigative Project’s illuminating expose of the slick Muslim spokesman Mahdi Bray, “Mahdi Bray: Voting With Conviction: An IPT Investigation,” from IPT News, March 27 (thanks to Axel):
Radical Defender
Beyond his criminal history and the voter registration issues, Bray has a history of defending accused terrorist supporters, and of offering misleading statements about his organization’s history and his own actions.
He traveled repeatedly to Dallas in support of defendants in the Hamas-support case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). After a 2007 trial ended in a hung jury, the five defendants were convicted following a retrial in November on 108 counts.
Bray also served as a character witness at a bond hearing for Sami Al-Arian, who was accused of providing support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). After an initial trial in 2005 ended with a mix of acquittals and a deadlocked jury on other counts, Al-Arian pled guilty in April 2006 to conspiring to provide goods or services to the PIJ.
Bray similarly has defended Ali Al-Timimi, who is serving a life sentence for soliciting others to wage war against the United States and attempting to contribute services to the Taliban. The conviction, Bray said, “bodes ill” for the First Amendment.
Later this month, he will speak at a fundraiser for the Muslim Link newspaper with British Member of Parliament George Galloway. Galloway is fresh off a trip to Gaza, where he gave 100 vehicles loaded with supplies and an unspecified amount of cash directly to Hamas officials.
Bray has made at least two trips to Cairo to stand in solidarity with Muslim Brotherhood members facing military tribunals for membership in a banned organization. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan accompanied Bray on his second trip to Egypt to stand in solidarity with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
After the IPT reported on the trip, Bray wrote an article in response, arguing his stop in Cairo was one among many and indicates his opposition to military tribunals more than support for the Brotherhood.
“The reality is that my trip had less to do with the Muslim Brotherhood than with my organization’s opposition to the human rights violations of Egypt-an American ally and the second largest recipient U.S. foreign aid.”
Federal prosecutors say MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” A telephone book described in testimony by a prosecution expert witness as listing Muslim Brotherhood members in the U.S. includes Ahmad Elkadi, Jamal Badawi, and Omar Soubani, MAS’s three founding directors.
In 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an investigation on the Brotherhood in America, reporting that:
“In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.
Some wanted the Brotherhood to remain underground, while others thought a more public face would make the group more influential.”
Despite those documented links, Bray insists MAS was “established in America, and we are not an overt or covert arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
On the same web page where Bray acknowledges being a registered voter is a slide show under the heading “Mahdi Bray’s Photos.” It includes images of demonstrations and political events in the U.S. One frame features a picture of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, who was killed by an Israeli bomb attack in 2004. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, created in the wake of the Palestinian Intifada in 1987.
There is much, much more. Read it all. And Part 1 is here.