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Holy Land Foundation chief sentenced to 65 years in jail

May 27, 2009 10:54 am By Marisol Seibold

“Jurors found him guilty on 34 charges, including support of Hamas, money laundering and tax fraud.”

An update on this story. “Holy Land Foundation chief sentenced to 65 years,” by Jason Trahan for the Dallas Morning News, May 27:

DALLAS “” One of the founders of the Holy Land Foundation was ordered to serve 65 years in prison Wednesday morning as sentencing began for five men convicted on charges in the largest terrorism financing case in American history.

“I did it because I cared, not at the behest of Hamas,” Shukri Abu Baker, 50, of Garland, told the judge during a long address to the court where he explained why he founded what was once the nation’s largest Muslim charity organization.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis, after cutting him off over the objections of his defense attorney, told the convicted man, “You didn’t tell the whole story. Palestinians were in a desperate situation, but that doesn’t justify supporting Hamas.”

Another defendant, Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, was sentenced to 180 months in prison, followed by three years of supervisory release after serving that time. Jurors found him guilty of providing support to Hamas, having been acquitted on 31 other charges in 2007.

The sentences come six months after a federal jury in Dallas convicted the men on Nov. 24 of funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian group Hamas.

It has been illegal to offer Hamas support since it was designated a terrorist organization by the Unites States in 1995.

The group has taken credit for hundreds of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians.

The across-the-board convictions on 108 separate charges were a major victory for the Bush administration following a 2007 mistrial of the same five men on nearly identical charges.

The men were not accused of violence.

Rather, Holy Land contributed money to, among other things, agencies that supported survivors of suicide bombers.

Sometimes Holy Land officials sent those families money directly.

Holy Land’s supporters say the prosecution was a politically motivated product of Bush’s “war on terror” and a prime example of post-Sept. 11, anti-Islam hysteria.

Their lawyers portrayed them as pious Muslims who only wished to help their Palestinian brethren in need.

The government’s case, which was streamlined for the second trial, chronicled the founding of Holy Land in the late 1980s by Hamas supporters as the group’s primary source of fundraising in the United States.

Evidence showed that Holy Land organizers’ openly pro-Hamas rhetoric at fundraising rallies in the early 1990s was toned down after President Bill Clinton designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Baker was born in Brazil in 1959, moved to Palestinian territory as a child and lived in Kuwait before coming to the U.S. in 1980. He served as Holy Land’s CEO. Jurors found him guilty on 34 charges, including support of Hamas, money laundering and tax fraud.

The sentencings were expected to take most of the day.

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