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Despite a previous denial, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – which regards itself as the leading U.S. Muslims civil rights group – participated in a three-day summit of members of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. The evidence surfaced at the trial of the Texas-based Islamic charity Holy Land Foundation and five of its former organizers, who are accused of supporting Hamas. Prosecutors named the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. According to Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, FBI Special Agent Laura Burns testified Thursday that the "Nihad" listed...

An Arab nation with ties to 9-11 has pledged a major endowment to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even as the Washington-based nonprofit group insists it receives no foreign support. The United Arab Emirates recently announced on its official government website that it has set up an endowment serving as a source of income for CAIR. The amount of the funding is undisclosed, but sources say it will be enough to help CAIR finance the construction of a new $24 million office building and a planned $50 million public-relations campaign aimed at repairing Islam's -- and the UAE's -- image...

A traffic stop in Detroit has led to serious suspicion , police said . Detroit police officers pulled over a vehicle near Atkinson and Second streets on a traffic stop. When officers questioned the driver, the man said he was from West Africa. In the trunk of the vehicle, police found license plates from different states, identifications cards and Arabic literature, Local 4 reported. The man was taken in to custody on a traffic violation. Police will not comment on the items found in the vehicle, but did say they are working with federal authorities.

. . . but not without multiple lawsuits. The strange story of the Islamic Society of Boston's new mosque.ON NOVEMBER 7, 2002, POLITICIANS AND OTHER LUMINARIES--including Boston Mayor Thomas P. Menino--gathered at the corner of Tremont Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. They held shovels and awaited a photo op to celebrate the ground-breaking of a new mosque for the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB). It was a special occasion. The design for the $22 million mosque included a125-foot minaret as well as a 75-foot dome over the prayer hall. Al Jazeera joined the local Boston media...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The fact that the U.S. government overlooked numerous warning signs in the run-up to the September 11 attacks is an old story that is being used in a new way in the Zacarias Moussaoui case. It could save his life. With the admitted al Qaeda conspirator facing a death penalty trial early next year, the judge framed a key question in a recent closed-door hearing: Even if Moussaoui had told the FBI everything that he knew, would that have enabled the government to avert the 2001 terrorist strikes? The question by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema was...

She says "common sense" connects Sami Al-Arian and others to financial support of PIJ violence. TAMPA - Use your common sense to see the connections. That's what federal prosecutor Cherie Krigsman told jurors Monday as she wrapped up part of the government's case in the five-month trial of Sami Al-Arian. Her closing argument to a packed courtroom began with a haunting video of a suicide bombing in Israel's West Bank in 1995, which showed American student Alisa Flatow, 20, lying unconscious on scorched grass beside a burned-out bus, with bleeding people around her. "Hot metal shrapnel, propelled at blinding speed,...

Prosecutor charges professor was terror 'crime boss' A fired college professor acted as a "crime boss" for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a murderous gang that operated like the Mafia, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday. Although Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants are not charged with killing anyone, they conspired to bring about attacks and are just as guilty under the law as the suicide bombers who carried them out, prosecutor Cherie Krigsman said in closing arguments. "The men of the PIJ you got to know in this case, they didn't strap bombs to their body," she said. "They leave that...

The defense rests its case. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Monday in the conspiracy trial. TAMPA - Suddenly, unexpectedly, it was over. Tuesday afternoon, nearly five months into the conspiracy trial of Sami Al-Arian, attorneys mounting a defense for the last two co-defendants rested their cases. The prosecution put on a brief rebuttal. And with that, much to the surprise of many in the courtroom, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody smiled at the jury and said, "That concluded the testimony." Before dismissing jurors for a long weekend, he warned them interest in the trial was about to spike,...

Prosecutors say that a co-defendant in the case wrote two messages praising martyrs on a PIJ Web site in 2001. TAMPA - As late as January, 2003, a defendant in the federal trial of Sami Al-Arian was receiving internal memos from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to government evidence. Tuesday, the evidence centered on defendant Hatem Fariz and three entries on his computer, which were discovered after February 2003, when the FBI seized the computer and arrested him. Besides the internal memo from the PIJ, an FBI computer forensic specialist found two 2001 guest book entries on a PIJ Web site,...

TAMPA - There was, perhaps, no better place to witness American-Islamic relations Saturday than from a comfortable seat in the lobby of the Tampa Convention Center. Outside the ballroom that would host the Council on American-Islamic Relations' annual Tampa banquet were olive-skinned men with beards and women wearing long dresses and burkas. They exchanged assalamu alaikums and cheek kisses. Flowing through the crowd of activist Muslims were those entering and exiting the Tampa Boat Show: light-skinned men in deck shoes and Hawaiian shirts and tanned women wearing capri pants and halter tops. Some were drinking beers, others pushing strollers. The...

Prosecutors win a round, but the defense is granted time to review the material. TAMPA - Prosecutors dealt a harsh blow to defendants in the trial of Sami Al-Arian Thursday, when the federal judge allowed into evidence stacks of Internet information on Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Previously, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody questioned whether the information, taken from the computers of defendants Ghassan Ballut and Hatem Fariz after a 2003 FBI seizure, could contribute to building a case against them and Al-Arian. Thursday, the judge ruled it could. Defense attorneys argued repeatedly that it was not clear where the Web...

The Monterey Herald recently carried an AP story about an undercover FBI operation that resulted in the arrests of two Muslim men on gun charges. Apparently, the arrests were the result of months-long sureillance of two Sacramento, CA, mosques. The FBI recorded conversations, used closed circuit television, and undercover agents in their investigation. Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Sacramento, CA branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was not pleased. His reaction to the arrests: "We're interested to see to what extent they're using informants, and whether there's entrapment." CAIR has repeatedly stated in the past that it...