The urge to draw sweeping lessons from Monday’s mistrial in a major terrorism-financing case is understandable but premature.
The media have been quick to portray the hung jury in the two-month trial of five operatives of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief & Development (HLF) — an ostensible Islamic charity — as the latest in a series of defeats for the Bush Justice Department’s counterterrorism efforts. Their narrative also places the trial of University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian in the administration’s “loss” column. That trial ended with the jury hanging on multiple counts and acquitting on others; yet al-Arian later pled guilty to a terrorism offense and will be deported after serving his sentence. Similarly, it is far from clear that the HLF case will stand as a defeat.
The Bush administration designated HLF a terrorist entity in December 2001, citing its longtime support of Hamas, to which it stands accused of transferring over $12 million between 1995 and 2001. One of the principal defendants, Ghassan Elashi, has already been convicted of terrorism charges related to, among other things, the handling and concealing of an investment by Mousa Abu Marzook — a senior Hamas leader who helped create HLF and established it as Hamas’s American fundraising arm. The defense seems not so much to dispute that extensive financial transfers happened as to question whether the defendants knowingly promoted terrorism, and whether “resistance” to Israel should be considered terrorism at all.
On most of the charges, the jury deadlocked; it did not acquit. The government’s case remains live, and it appears the defendants will be retried. This may prove to be an instance of justice delayed, not justice denied.
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