US Muslim Charity Holy Land Foundation sentenced to 65 years

The leader of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States was sentenced to 65 years in jail Wednesday for supporting Palestinian militants, in a major U.S.-based terrorism financing case.

The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and five of its leaders were convicted late last year of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.

Jurors returned guilty verdicts on 108 charges of providing material support to terrorists, money laundering and tax fraud.

Skukri Abu Baker, whose brother Jamal Issa is the head of Hamas operations in Yemen, was Holy Land's chief executive officer and the first to be sentenced.

Holy Land cofounder Mohamed El-Mezain, who is related to Hamas deputy political leader Mousa Abu Marzook, was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Three other Holy Land organizers were expected to receive their sentences later Wednesday.

The Holy Land case was a major victory in the "war on terror" of former President George W. Bush.

The Holy Land Foundation one of several Muslim charities the Bush administration shut down in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for allegedly raising money for overseas Islamic extremists.

Muslim charities that remained open reported significant drops in contributions because of fears of prosecution even as juries deadlocked on the Holy Land case and rendered acquittals and convictions of lesser charges in two other high-profile terror financing cases in Florida and Chicago.

New jury

The Justice Department vowed in October 2007 to retry the five Holy Land leaders after jurors could not agree on verdicts on nearly 220 charges and a new jury was seated in mid-September.

Prosecutors took about two months to present evidence that Holy Land was created in the late 1980s to gather donations from deep-pocketed American Muslims to support the then-newly formed Hamas movement resisting the Israeli occupation.

Hamas - a multi-faceted Islamist political, social and armed movement which controls the Gaza Strip in the Palestinian territories -- was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1995 and the trial centered over whether Holy Land continued to support the group after this point.

Prosecutors did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in terrorist activity. Instead, they said humanitarian aid was used to promote Hamas and allow it to divert existing funds to militant activities.

Defense attorneys said the charity was a non-political organization which operated legally to get much-needed aid to Palestinians living in squalor under the Israeli occupation and argued that their clients were on trial chiefly because of their family ties.