'Attachment A' Is a Roadmap to Hamas Enablers in the US - Is the FBI Paying Attention?

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.meforum.org/65156/attachment-a-is-a-roadmap-to-hamas-enablers-
in

AUSTIN, Texas — Is the US-designated terrorist group Hamas active in the
United States?

Of course it is, as it has been since the early 1990s, albeit limiting its
activities mainly to influencing the media and therefore government policy
toward Israel, and potentially still illegally fundraising in ways the FBI
has not yet uncovered.

If the bureau has even been looking for that anymore.

"Hamas supporters have long operated in the United States," concludes the
first bullet point in a fresh October report, "The Hamas Network in
America," by George Washington University's respected Program on
Extremism.

https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/2023-10/the-
hamas-network-in-america.pdf

We know this much because after the federal government convicted five
defendants who ran the largest organized Hamas wing in the United States
in November 2008, the US Attorney's Office in Dallas left behind an 11-
page list of unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers known as
"Attachment A."

https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/423.pdf

Attachment A is part of a case called United States of America v. the Holy
Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an Islamic charity that used
to operate in the Dallas area.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/ag/speeches/2004/72704ag.htm

Prosecutors alleged HLF was raising money for terrorist attacks in Israel.

The defendants always denied any connection to Hamas, even though one of
the indicted men, who sang death-to-Jews songs in a band at "Intifada
festival" fundraisers, is the half-brother of Hamas leader Khalid Mishal.

https://www.toddbensman.com/the-terrorist-at-city-hall/

A second defendant is Mishal's cousin, Akram Mishal, who went on the lam
with defendant Haitham Maghawri.

Both remain fugitives.

A related early-2000s federal prosecution, USA v. Infocom Corporation,
convicted relatives and spouses of other Holy Land Foundation officers as
Hamas operatives who'd funneled money to Mousa Abu Marzouk, another
current senior Hamas leader, who lived in Dallas until he was deported in
1997.

Hamas has rarely expressed interest in direct attacks on the United States
but has operated here to raise money and lobby decision-makers to reduce
American support for Israel.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/01/opinion/hamas-officials-admit-its-strategy-
is-to-use-palestinian-civilians-as-human-shields/

Attachment A is a list of 246 individuals and entities, including "HLF
employees" and "members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." In the years since,
some of those entities may have changed their names or reorganized, while
others have not.

I asked James Jacks, the lead prosecutor on the HLF cases whose team in
the Northern District of Texas produced Attachment A, if the list might be
useful now.

"It could be something that an agent could look at" as a predicate for
fresh preliminary investigations, said Jacks, now retired and in private
practice.

"It would be something that would have to be within the statute of
limitations, so you basically would have to find recent evidence of
providing material support. There certainly could be more fundraising
going on, prompted by the military action over there.

"If people here are sympathetic, they could be more motivated to give
money now."

One of those reconstituted from an entity on the HLF list has just found
itself in the crosshairs again, although not of federal prosecutors but
from an unlikely quarter: Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.

The state's Consumer Protection Section has opened an investigation into
American Muslims for Palestine "for potential violations of Virginia's
charitable solicitation laws," a recent public notice announced.

https://www.oag.state.va.us/media-center/news-releases/2630-october-31-
2023-attorney-generals-office-opens-investigation-into-american-muslims-
for-palestine-nonprofit

The allegations against AMP come from a civil lawsuit still pending from
the HLF case by the Boim family of Illinois, seeking to collect damages
from HLF funds awarded years earlier for a suicide-bombing attack that
killed their son David in Israel.

This suit claims that the Islamic Association of Palestine, which is on
the co-conspirator list and decommissioned itself after the 2004 HLF
indictment, rebranded as American Muslims for Palestine and has evaded the
Boim judgment, a claim AMP vehemently denies as a "defamatory and
dangerous smear."

https://www.ampalestine.org/media/media-room/statements/american-muslims-
palestine-statement-defamatory-and-dangerous-smear

Some of the groups in Attachment A are very much alive and well inside the
United States, having reoriented themselves for political and educational
efforts, to make material support for terrorism cases more difficult to
charge, the George Washington University report concludes.

On page 5, for instance, is the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), which major American news organizations today, such as CNN,
regularly seek out and quote about US policy toward Israel.

This is despite the fact that wiretaps and FBI agent testimony during the
HLF trial showed CAIR worked as an influence operation for Hamas in the
United States.

The Anti-Defamation League noted years after the trial that "CAIR leaders
often traffic in antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric [and] have
cultivated suspicion among the public toward a wide array of American
Jewish institutions."

A September 2013 Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report
on CAIR noted, "The evidence at trial linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a
specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an
unindicted co-conspirator in the case." (CAIR officials denied this.)

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2013/e0707r-summary.pdf

It said Justice Department officials should not interact with the group,
"to prevent CAIR from publicly exploiting such contacts with the FBI."

Another entity on the list that never morphed into something else is the
Islamic Society of North America, whose leaders raise money and have
tolerated venomous anti-Jewish canards at annual conventions and
conferences throughout the United States.

https://www.investigativeproject.org/1085/mainstream-islamist-convention-
features-hate

It stages what its website says are "youth programs, interfaith programs,
chaplaincy services, matrimonials, and webinars" and publishes the
bimonthly Islamic Horizons Magazine.

ISNA was among several list members that waged court battles to be removed
from Attachment A, on grounds the list's accidental publication violated
their Fifth Amendment rights.

But judges always ruled the government's evidence to the contrary was
overwhelming and denied a petition for expungement.

"The evidence is ... sufficient to show the association of these entities
with HLF, IAP, and Hamas," wrote US District Judge Jorge A. Solis in a
2009 opinion, which went on for many pages to enumerate evidence of their
Hamas parenthood.

https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1425.pdf

Solis ordered the list sealed (a decision the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals reversed) but not expunged of any names. And so it remains public.

CAIR and other groups and people still on the unindicted co-conspirator
and joint venturer list no doubt enjoy that America has largely forgotten
it.

Todd Bensman is a Ginsburg/Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East
Forum and a senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration
Studies. He previously led counterterrorism-related intelligence efforts
for the Texas Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.


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