Another Day, Another Bullshit Terror Case

Feds drop charge in terror funding case


By Rudolph Bush

September 22, 2006, 8:35 PM CDT

In a surprise move that stunned defense attorneys, federal prosecutors announced Friday that they will drop a key charge against a Bridgeview grocer accused of supporting terrorism as a leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas.

Muhammad Salah was charged in 2003 with aiding Hamas in one of the few terrorism prosecutions in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft announced Salah's indictment, signaling a more aggressive approach toward U.S. citizens suspected of supporting foreign extremist groups.

But Friday's move raised questions with both the judge and the defense about how much of the case remains against Salah.

Salah, 53, still faces charges that he conspired to provide funds and other aid to Hamas and that he obstructed justice by lying in a civil suit about his alleged work on behalf of the group.

But he will not face charges that in 1999 he provided money and recruited new members for Hamas.

Nor will he face the testimony of an undercover informant, Jack Mustafa, who befriended Salah in 1997 in order to provide federal agents with detailed accounts of his alleged work for Hamas.

Coming three weeks before Salah's trial is scheduled to begin, the prosecutors' announcement astounded his defense attorneys.

"I think it's the heart of the case. It really changes everything," said attorney Michael Deutsch.

The defense told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve that the decision could call the entire case into question based on statutes of limitations, which require charges be filed within a certain number of years from the time an alleged crime is committed.

Prosecutors declined to comment on why they dismissed the charge and decided not to call a key informant in whom the government invested significant time and money.

Deutsch said that Mustafa was not a believable witness and noted that one FBI report warned that agents had "significant questions about the credibility of this informant."

St. Eve ruled that by Monday afternoon, prosecutors must explain what parts of the indictment will be affected by the decision.

Mustafa's testimony was also expected to bolster portions of the main charge against Salah, that he was a leading Hamas member who has conspired since 1988 to aid the organization.

Salah's attorneys said that without Mustafa's testimony, prosecutors will have to rely almost entirely on a confession Salah gave to Israeli agents in 1993.

That year, Israeli soldiers arrested Salah at a checkpoint in the Gaza Strip. He was carrying more than $97,000, which prosecutors charge was intended to support terrorism.

The defense has maintained Salah was providing money for charitable work and noted that in 1993 it wasn't illegal in the U.S. to provide aid to Hamas.

The U.S. designated Hamas a terrorist organization in the mid-1990s.

After confessing to Israeli authorities, Salah, a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty before an Israeli court to being a member of Hamas. He spent four years in prison there before he returned to Bridgeview in 1997.

The defense has argued that Salah confessed to Israeli agents under extreme duress, that he was deprived of sleep and forced to sit in uncomfortable positions.

Prosecutors have maintained that Salah's confession was voluntary.

After a weekslong hearing earlier this year, St. Eve agreed the confession could be used as evidence at trial.

Prosecutors are expected to provide evidence at trial of bank records that they will argue corroborate information Salah gave Israeli agents. They will also argue that he gave factual accounts of things that only a high-ranking Hamas member could know.

In court Friday, Salah's attorneys appeared furious at the government for what they said was an 11th hour announcement that will significantly alter the preparation of their defense.

"This is outrageous the government is taking this change of position at this time. They should be sanctioned, and the indictment should be dismissed," said defense attorney Erica Thompson.

Another of Salah's attorneys, Robert Bloom, scrawled "government fraud" on a legal pad. He unwittingly placed the pad on a machine that projected what he had written onto several computer monitors around the court.

A clearly angry St. Eve reprimanded him.

"That's what I'm thinking," Bloom said.

"Well, keep your thoughts to yourself," she sharply responded.

Outside of court, the defense seemed pleased with its unexpected victory.

Salah's wife, Maryam, gently hugged her husband as he stood silent but smiling in a hallway of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

The prosecutors' decision, meanwhile, is less likely to affect Salah's co-defendant, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar of suburban Washington, D.C.

Ashqar, 48, was not charged in the dismissed count and was not a subject of Mustafa's informing.

Ashqar's attorney, William Moffit, said he wants to look at how the indictment will change before commenting on what effect the decision might have on the case.

Salah's attorneys, meanwhile, said they intend to ask St. Eve to postpone the trial because they spent so much time preparing for Mustafa's testimony.

St. Eve has declined previous requests to move the trial date.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Oct. 12.

Original article posted here.