Three jurors dispute the acquittals in a terrorism-funding case.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 23, 2007
DALLAS - The biggest terror-financing trial since the Sept. 11 attacks ended in confusion Monday, with no one convicted and many acquittals thrown out after three jurors took the rare step of disputing the verdict.
Prosecutors said they would probably retry leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, as well as the organization itself, which the federal government shut down in December 2001. They were accused of funneling millions to Hamas, which has carried out suicide bombings in Israel and was designated a terrorist group in 1995, making financial transactions with it illegal.
Outside the courthouse, jubilant family members and supporters hoisted defendant and Holy Land chief executive Shukri Abu Baker on their shoulders and cried, "God is great!"
After two months of testimony and 19 days of deliberations, the jury reached verdicts for only one of the five defendants, finding former Holy Land chairman Mohammed El-Mezain not guilty of 31 of 32 counts and deadlocking on the remaining charge.
Acquittals for two other defendants, Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh, were read in court. But when the judge polled each juror - normally a formality - things turned chaotic, as three jurors said they disagreed with the verdicts.
U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish sent the jury back to resolve the differences, but after about an hour he said he received a note from the jury saying 11 of the 12 thought further deliberations would not lead them to reach a unanimous decision. Then he declared a mistrial.
The jury forewoman said none of the jurors raised objections to the verdicts in the jury room.
Juror William Neal said the panel found little evidence against three of the defendants and was evenly split on charges against Baker and former Holy Land chairman Ghassan Elashi, who were seen as the principal leaders of the charity. Elashi was represented by Tampa lawyer Linda Moreno, who represented former University of South Florida Sami Al-Arian at his terrorism trial.
"I thought they were not guilty across the board," said Neal, a 33-year-old art director from Dallas. The case "was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence."
President Bush personally announced the seizure of Holy Land's assets in December 2001, calling the action "another step in the war on terrorism."
Holy Land's lawyers say the group helped children and families left homeless or poor by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lead prosecutor James Jacks said in court that he expected the government to try the case again, but he could not elaborate because of a gag order.
"This is a stunning setback for the government," said a former U.S. attorney, Matthew Orwig.
Holy Land was founded in California in the late 1980s and moved to the Dallas area in 1992. The case followed terror-financing trials in Chicago and Florida that also ended without convictions on the major counts.
The government "failed in Chicago, it failed in Florida, it failed in Texas," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of dozens of Muslim groups named as unindicted co-conspirators. "The reason it failed is the government does not have the facts; it has fear."
