U.S. trial of two alleged Hamas members nears end
Source: Reuters
By Andrew Stern CHICAGO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The Palestinian group Hamas used the United States as a safe haven to organize, raise money and recruit bomb makers that resulted in hundreds of deaths in Israel, a federal prosecutor said on Monday. Two Palestinian-born men -- one a Chicago-area grocer and the other a business professor -- were described in closing arguments at their trial on racketeering and other charges as "highly placed" members of Hamas who funneled cash and information for the group. Hamas, which was elected last year to head the Palestinian government, has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States. "It has always been illegal in the United States to conspire to help a murderous organization engaged in kidnapping and hostage-taking," assistant U.S. attorney Joseph Ferguson said in his remarks to the jury following the 10-week trial. Muhammad Salah, 53, of the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, Illinois, and co-defendant Abedelhaleem Ashqar, 48, who taught at Howard University in Washington, face years in prison if convicted on just the single racketeering conspiracy count. They are also accused of money laundering, obstruction of justice and other crimes. Ferguson appeared to put Hamas itself on trial, while detailing Salah's movements and contacts during the early 1990s on behalf of its U.S.-based leader at the time, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook. A doctoral student in the United States during the period, Marzook was originally charged in the 2004 indictment charging Salah and Ashqar but is believed to be in Syria. Ferguson repeatedly implicated Salah with his own words as contained in his disputed confessions to Israeli interrogators. He told of meetings with Hamas operatives in two trips to Israel and the occupied territories, sometimes relaying Marzook's complaints that "military operations" were not frequent enough. IMPRISONED IN ISRAEL For the first time, agents of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service testified at a U.S. trial -- in disguise to a courtroom cleared by the judge -- and said Salah was not tortured. Another high-profile prosecution witness was former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who was given a tour of Salah's prison in Israel and saw part of his interrogation -- later writing a front-page article on the topic. Defense lawyers have argued throughout the trial Salah's lengthy confession was coerced following his January 1993 arrest at an Israeli checkpoint. Salah, who was carrying nearly $100,000 in cash, was contributing to the humanitarian work of Hamas, his lawyers said. Salah spent nearly five years in Israeli prisons. Hamas is devoted to the destruction of Israel, Ferguson said, and its humanitarian work is closely entwined with its violent methods to further that aim. "Hamas (first) focused on military targets, then in the 1990s on civilian targets -- killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including Americans," he told the jury. The goal was to disrupt any efforts at securing peace, which included a discussion involving Salah about assassinating a Palestinian negotiator advocating a two-state solution, he said. Ferguson cited telephone records, documents, travel records, address books and money trails showing Salah received $1 million and was in the process of disseminating roughly $300,000 in cash to Hamas operatives in the Middle East. The jury is expected to begin deliberations later in the week.
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