Tag: Hamas

Five leaders of Muslim charity convicted in terrorism financing trial

Holy Land Foundation On their second try, federal prosecutors won sweeping convictions Monday against five leaders of a Muslim charity in a retrial of the largest terrorism-financing case in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The five defendants, all leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, based in Richardson, a Dallas suburb, were convicted on all 108 criminal counts against them, including support of terrorism, money laundering and tax fraud. The group was accused of funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, an Islamist organization the government declared to be a terrorist group in 1995.

Hamas worried about rise in support for religious sect

These believers, known to Gazans as salafis, will not discuss politics or matters such as the tahadiyeh or the “Zionist enemy.”

They are not a political group, yet some Hamas members see them as a threat, especially in the public arena. They are a kind of sect of Sunni Islam that has operated throughout the world since the dawn of Islam, calling on believers to imitate the ways of the prophet Mohammed and the group of his companions known as the sahabah.