Debbie Schlussel: Sadly, Another Schlussel Prediction Comes True: Holy Land Foundation HAMAS Financiers Acquitted, Yet Another "Justice" Dept. Failure
By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
Don't say I didn't warn you about this. I predicted the Justice Department would lose their case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Muslim charity that financed HAMAS in concert with CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and virtually every mainstream American Islamic group. And, sadly, I was right.
This morning, the HLF defendants were acquitted on many charges, and on the rest the jury was not unanimous, which means a hung jury--yet another victory for these blantant terrorist financiers--three of the five defendants were acquitted of most of the charges against them. The judge declared a mistrial on those counts, but the fact that the majority of those jurors polled voted for acquittal says all we need to know. We lost, they won. And our "warriors" in the courtroom stink.
I've written repeatedly about Justice Department failures to successfully prosecute terrorists. They've lost the Sami Al-Arian case (another acquittal/DOJ loss I predicted), the Sami Omar Al-Hussayen case, the Mohammed Salah case, etc., etc., ad nauseam. All of these were incredible--but predictable--failures for the so-called domestic War on Terror. I say "so-called" not because I don't believe these are terrorists. They definitely are. I say "so-called" because the Justice Department only goes after these parties after years, decades have elapsed. And, even then, it does so only when its hand has been forced, and does so half-heartedly.
In this case, as in the Al-Arian case, the prosecutors threw in so much extraneous garbage into the case that confused jurors' eyes glazed over from a mostly-diluted, orginally strong case.
Further, the Holy Land Foundation and its employees and associates should have been prosecuted a decade ago, but they weren't because the government didn't want to do a damned thing. Then, it was Clinton at the White House. But even under Bush and Ashcroft, they went after the HLF only after FBI Special Agent Robert Wright--who'd been begging for this prosecution for years--went on ABC News and publicly expressed his disgust. Finally, after that, John Ashcroft decided to indict HLF and a few of its minions. But Agent Wright was persecuted, demoted, and nearly fired as a result.
Meanwhile, while the Holy Land Foundation defendants celebrate their tremendous victory over a limp, PC-dominated Justice Department, the man who won their single greatest post-9/11 victory against terrorists, Richard Convertino, continues to stand trial for daring to prosecute Al-Qaeda terrorists and actually win convictions against them.
When I wrote that the DoJ would lose this case, DoJ employee apologists posted dumb comments on this site claiming I didn't know what I was talking about and commenting on how hard the DoJ was working on this. Ha. Sadly, I knew exactly what I was talking about.
Yes, I predicted the Justice Department would lose, but you could have, too. Their win-loss record against terrorists is worse than that of the Detroit Lions. But in the NFL, it's not about the life and death of a nation.
America versus the Terrorists . . . Desperate But NOT Serious. For how much longer will we trust American lives--and the lives snuffed out by HAMAS--to these failures at the Justice Department?
This is Exhibit A for treating terrorists like a national security problem, not a criminal one. Exhibit A #2,309 out of so many others:
Because of the confusion, the judge has not officially accepted the three innocent verdicts, which acquitted charity fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader on all counts and two others on most counts: former chairman Mohammed El-Mezain and the group's New Jersey representative, Abdulrahman Odeh.
Regardless, they've won. And we lost. Yet again.
**** UPDATE: Reader M.T. makes a great point:
It is stunning that the US Attorney could not get a conviction in this case. After all, the US Attorney managed to secure the convictions of Border Patrol agents Campean and Ramos when they could not even link the recovered slug to any weapon, let alone that of the agents. The other irregularities in the testimony, evidence handling and the treatment of the "victim" by the US Atorney's office is staggering. See what can be done if you simply put your mind to it?
Exactly right.
Posted by Debbie on October 22, 2007 12:19 PM to Debbie Schlussel
