Izhar Khan is free today: apparently we are to believe that he knew nothing about and would have strongly disapproved of his father’s activity in “funneling about $50,000 to the Taliban to target U.S. interests in Pakistan.” The judge said that the case against his father, Hafiz Khan, would proceed: “Scola said Thursday that the government’s case against the 77-year-old imam of the Flagler Mosque is overwhelming.”
“Judge throws out Taliban terror case against Margate imam,” by Jay Weaver for the Miami Herald, January 17 (thanks to Twostellas):
A federal judge threw out the terrorism charges against a young Muslim cleric from Broward County in a trial where he and his father, an imam in Miami, are accused of providing financial support to the Pakistani Taliban terrorist organization.
Izhar Khan, the imam of a mosque in Margate, will be a free man later Thursday after U.S. District Judge Robert Scola issued a verdict of acquittal for the 26-year-old Muslim scholar.
The prosecution, which rested its case Wednesday in the material support trial, failed to mount sufficient evidence of wrongdoing against the younger imam, imam of Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen mosque off Sample Road….
Both father and son have been held in the Miami federal detention center since their arrest in 2011 on charges of funneling about $50,000 to the Taliban to target U.S. interests in Pakistan. The Taliban allegedly used the funds for buying arms and other ammunition to carry our terrorist attacks against the Pakistan government, which is a U.S. ally.
Scola already denied Hafiz Khan’s bid for an acquittal verdict halfway through the trial. Scola said Thursday that the government’s case against the 77-year-old imam of the Flagler Mosque is overwhelming.
The government’s case has been built largely on FBI-recorded phone conversations between Hafiz Khan and other members of his family and suspected Taliban sympathizers. His bank records have also been central to the government’s case against him.