DALLAS (AP) — A jury reached a decision yesterday after deliberating for nearly three weeks in the trial of former leaders of a Muslim charity accused of funneling millions of dollars in illegal aid to Middle Eastern terrorists.
The decision will not be read until Monday, a magistrate said. The defendants faced as many as 35 counts each, and it is possible that jurors could not decide on some or all of the major counts.
U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish, who presided over the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, was out of town at a judicial convention, and the official who took the jury’s verdict said he could not legally read it.
“Nobody, including myself, will even glance at it,” Magistrate Paul Stickney said.
Jurors deliberated for 19 days. Lawyers for both sides declined to comment as they left the courtroom.
Holy Land was the nation’s largest Muslim charity before federal authorities shut it down in December 2001.
Prosecutors said the Texas-based group funneled $12.4 million to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas after January 1995, when the U.S. government declared Hamas a terrorist group, making such aid illegal.
Many of the nation’s biggest Muslim groups were named by the government as unindicted co-conspirators in the case, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust.
Lawyers for Holy Land said it was a legitimate charity that helped Muslim children and families left homeless or poor by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Holy Land and the five former leaders were charged with aiding a terrorist group, conspiracy and money laundering. The defendants could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
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