Legal Background Upon shutting down the Holy Land Foundation in 2001, President Bush said in a press conference that “money raised by the HLF is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers.” Two and a half years later, the indictment was released. After sifting through hundreds of wiretapped phone calls and hundreds of thousands of documents, prosecutors could not find a connection between the HLF and Hamas. Therefore, the prosecutors altered their allegations. They charged the HLF with providing charity to Palestinian zakat committees that were allegedly “controlled by” and “worked on behalf of Hamas.” The first trial in 2007 lasted three months, and after 12 plus years of investigation, millions of taxpayer money spent and 19 days of deliberation, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict. William Neal, one of the leading jurors of the first trial, said, “They kept trying to show us stuff around the case, not the case. They presented to the jury, you know these committees, these organizations controlled by or on the behalf of Hamas, but they kept showing us blown-up buses and they kept showing us little kids in bomb belts reenacting Hamas leaders. It had nothing to do with the actual charges. It had nothing to do with the defendants.” Another juror Nanette Scroggins said, “I kept expecting the government to come up with something, and it never did. From what I saw, this was about Muslims raising money to support Muslims, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.” Following a hung jury, or a split decision, the judge declared a mistrial and prosecutors persisted on retrying the case the following year. In 2008, after essentially the same arguments, jurors returned all guilty verdicts. In 2009, the Holy Land Five received sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years. The defense attorneys are currently appealing the case.
Defending Charity: Supporting the Holy Land Five
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