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The Investigative Project is reporting that attorneys for Hamas
operative Muhammad Salah have filed a lawsuit on his behalf claiming
that his designation as a terrorist has interfered with finding
employment and the conduct of everyday life. According to the
report:
IPT News • Sep 7, 2012 at 6:15 pm Attorneys for a Chicago man
believed to be the only American citizen designated as terrorist sued
the U.S. Treasury Department this week, saying he’s been virtually
unable to hold a job or engage in everyday transactions as a result.
Muhammad Salah was designated a terrorist in August 1995, months after
an executive order by President Bill Clinton named Hamas a terrorist
group and prohibited transactions with the group. Salah was in an
Israeli prison at the time after pleading guilty to a Hamas support
charge. He returned to Illinois after his release in 1997, but with
limited exceptions has been unable to open a bank account, buy groceries
or gifts for his family because of the Clinton order’s ban on
transactions with a designated terrorist, the lawsuit said. ‘There is no
endpoint to the designation and its restrictions,’ the lawsuit said. It
argues the designation was never court-tested, violating Salah’s due
process rights and essentially punishing him without a trial. He is
joined in the suit by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) and the American Friends Services Committee, a Quaker
organization.
Read the rest here.
A
post from October
2009 reported that Abdelhaleem Ashqar, part of he Muslim
Brotherhood/Hamas support network in the U.S and a co-defendant with
Salah, lost his appeal of his 11-year prison sentence for refusing to
testify before a U.S. grand jury in 2003 that was investigating Hamas. A
post from November 2007 discussed the background to the conviction of
Dr. Ashqar:
U.S. media has reported that a former professor accused
of being part of a Hamas support network was sentenced to more than 11
years in prison Wednesday for refusing to testify before a U.S. grand
jury in 2003 that was investigating Hamas. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, a
former associate professor of business at Washington’s Howard
University, was convicted earlier this year on criminal contempt and
obstruction of justice charges for his refusal to testify but he and
codefendant Muhammad Salah were acquitted of participating in a
racketeering conspiracy aimed at financing Hamas. (Salah was later
sentenced to 22 months in prison after being convicted of lying in a
civil suit concerning Hamas support.) Public records indicate that in
1993, Ashqar was the Registered Agent for the Al-Aqsa Educational Fund
in Mississippi which, according to various FBI documents, was the
original collection point for Hamas fund-raising in the U.S before it
was replaced by the Holy Land Foundation in 1994. Documents released as
part of the recent Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial
indicate the the Hamas fund-raising and support network in the U.S. was
an integral part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
Appellate court ruling can be found
here.
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