Muslim Charity Accuses Federal Government of Fabricating Evidence

Defense lawyers say a key piece of the U.S. government’s evidence in a case charging a charity with supporting terrorism seems to have been fabricated, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, then the nation’s largest Muslim charity, was closed five years ago by the government, which accused the group of funneling money to the terrorist group Hamas. The organization denied the charges and complained that the government had made up the evidence against it.

Lawyers for seven Holy Land Foundation officials accused of wrongdoing say that anti-Semitic comments included in the government’s official summary of a wiretapped conversation between Holy Land officials—including references to “the demons of Israel” and “the illegal Zionist state of Israel”—do not appear anywhere in a recently disclosed full transcript of the conversation.

Defense lawyers have filed a motion in court to declassify thousands of hours of government surveillance to replace the official summaries with full transcripts as evidence.

The defense lawyers’ filing argues that “not only are the summaries so inaccurate and misleading as to be useless,” but that the “author of the attached summary has cynically and maliciously attributed to the defendants racist invective and inculpatory remarks the defendants never uttered.”

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