http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/08/cair_youngest_member_of_hamas.php

As the trial for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) continues, the mountain of evidence presented by prosecutors demonstrates, in detail, the existence of a grand Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States dating back to the 1960s. A segment of this network, the self-designated “Palestine Committee,” sought to financially, politically, and morally support the efforts of HAMAS to destroy the “Zionist enemy.”

One exhibit – the Palestine Committee’s 1991 bylaws – reveals a web of key organizations tied to the Committee that were tasked with promoting HAMAS’ agenda, each in a particular field. Six groups were listed, the most prominent being HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR).

What has so far gone unnoticed, though, is one last organization on this list that the Committee hoped to establish in the future. As stated in the bylaws, this organization would handle “issues relating to political work and foreign relations”:

It is a committee which operates through the Association [IAP] for now. It is hoped that it will become an official organization for political work and its headquarters will be in Washington, God’s willing. It represents the political aspect to support the cause politically on the American front.
An organization headquartered in Washington, DC, tasked with political activism, born out of the IAP? Maybe a vague reference at first glance, but growing evidence points to the identity of the mystery organization listed in the bylaws as the youngest in the family of HAMAS front groups founded on American soil.

Fast forward to July 30, 1994, just weeks after the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded. A Palestine Committee meeting agenda lists several issues to be discussed, including a review of the reports of the “working organizations.” Listed among these organizations right beside HLF, IAP, and UASR – all members of the Palestine Committee as listed in the bylaws – is the word “CAIR.”

The same CAIR that is headquartered in Washington, and whose co-founders – executive director Nihad Awad and chairman emeritus Omar Ahmad – served as president and public relations director, respectively, of the IAP.

Add to that recently-released evidence that both Ahmad and Awad were present at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia attended by two-dozen HAMAS members and supporters. According to an FBI analysis and transcripts of wiretapped conversations, they spent three days discussing the most effective approach to derail the Oslo Accords, a peace deal with the potential to end the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

This latest document tying CAIR to HAMAS is just one more piece of the puzzle, and it raises serious questions about the organization’s political agenda in the United States. Should an organization listed on Muslim Brotherhood documents, with leaders directly tied to the movement, really escape scrutiny and be accepted as the “mainstream” voice of an entire community? Or should the American public and political establishment take another look?

Yesterday, Crain’s Detroit Business reported that Ismael Ahmed, Founder and Executive Director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, was picked by Michigan’s liberal Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm to head the State of Michigan’s Department of Human Services.

Readers of this site are familiar with Ahmed because I’ve written a great deal about him. The former head of Jesse Jackson’s Michigan Presidential campaign, heads a Muslim-dominated agency that defrauds Medicaid by helping bring pregnant Muslim women from all over the world to America and giving them phony Social Security numbers to use so they can defraud Medicaid and have you–the taxpayers pay thousands of dollars to cover the deliveries of their babies. Plus the babies get U.S. citizenship.

Ismael Ahmed: Islamofascist Fox Now “Guarding” Infidel Medicaid Henhouse

Granholm knows a lot about this because she was Michigan Attorney General in December 2002, when agents of her office and the FBI raided ACCESS in connection with a Medicaid fraud investigation her office oversaw. That’s why it was strange when she hired her friend, Ahmed, to Co-Chair her Gubernatorial Transition Team, since she knew of Ahmed’s organizations involvement in this scam. (She’s since appointed him as a Regent of Eastern Michigan University.)

BUT, that she hired Ahmed to now oversee Michigan’s disbursements of Medicaid–now as the new Director of the Michigan Department of Human Services–is even more outrageous. Trite but true, it’s exactly like hiring the fox to guard the henhouse. It’s also disturbing because Ahmed’s agency used thousands of government job-training funds to train Al-Qaeda terrorists to get commercial driver’s licenses and hazardous material hauling certificates.

And his agency used government money to sponsor the University of Michigan Divestment (from Israel) Conference. Imagine what Ahmed will do with access to and control over Michigan’s giant budget for everything that falls under “Human Services.”

Make no mistake. Michigan’s top Republicans aren’t clean in this either. Current Michigan Attorney General and Republican Mike Cox carefully waited until Muslim women defrauding Medicaid left the country before he issued bench warrants for their arrest. He did that, so he would never actually have to arrest them, interview them, and go after ACCESS and the other malefactors involved in this . . . and offend Muslims. He’s been vying for extremist Muslim Arab votes and believes they are the route to his becoming Governor when term-limited Granholm leaves office after 2010.

He appeared on FOX News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” to gush all over himself for issuing these empty warrants and lied to Bill O’Reilly, claiming that the people who turned these women in were “Arabs,” themselves, “from the community,” implying they were also Muslims. In fact, none of them are–all Infidels of non-Arab extraction. And what’s worse, Cox issued the warrants, despite Justice Department requests not to, tipping off targets. (An incompetent, stupid former Assistant U.S. Attorney gave him the documents and information.) But rather than do the right thing for a proper investigation, he needed his time to shine in the “O’Reilly Factor” sun. After all, he wants to be Governor and, then, President.

To date, Cox done nothing to stop the Medicaid fraud at Ismael Ahmed’s ACCESS, which continues and has throughout his five years as Michigan’s chief law enforcement official. He is as culpable as Granholm in the wholesale giveaway of U.S. citizenship and tax-paid Medicaid dollars in Michigan to those who–surprise! surprise!–share the same religion as the 19 hijackers of September 11th.

Read more about Ismael Ahmed and his terrorist ties.

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Chet Bowen
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From the Investigative Project on Terrorism
Steven Emerson

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/08/cair_identified_by_the_fbi_as.php
Dallas–In testimony Tuesday, FBI Agent Lara Burns reported before the jury in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, right alongside HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). Agent Lara Burns further testified that CAIR received money from HLF — a claim that Nihad Awad blatantly denied in a congressional testimony in September of 2003.

Burns also said that both Omar Ahmed and Nihad Awad, CAIR co-founders who today serve as CAIR’s chairman emeritus and executive director, respectively, were also listed as individual members the Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in America.

Awad and Ahmed are further connected to the Palestine Committee based on their positions as president and public relations director of the IAP, a Hamas front group that was responsible for the dissemination of propaganda, and has since been closed down as a result of a multi-million dollar civil judgment in a trial involving the murder of an American teenager by HAMAS terrorists.

CAIR, which touts itself as America’s premier Muslim civil rights organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial. Burns’ testimony so far has placed both Ahmed and Awad at a 1993 Philadelphia meeting where the HAMAS members and supporters discussed a strategy to kill the Oslo Peace Accords, which threatened to marginalize HAMAS. The group also discussed ways to improve HAMAS fundraising in America.

Government testimony regarding the role of CAIR reflects the prosecution’s attempt to prove that the HAMAS network in America was established through the Palestine Committee, or what the indictment called “a sub-group of active Muslim Brotherhood members of Palestinian origin.” The leader of this Committee was Musa Abu Marzook, a Specially Designated Terrorist since 1995, and Hamas’ current Deputy Political Bureau Chief. Through this committee, a number of organizations were established to promote HAMAS politically and financially, including HLF, IAP and UASR.

What is the Palestine Committee

In 1988, the head of the Palestine Section (a.k.a. the Palestine Body) of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Levant came to America, where he met with fellow Muslim Brothers and established the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. This is revealed in a 1991 letter seized from the home of unindicted co-conspirator Ismail Elbarasse.

An October 1992 internal memo (also seized from Elbarrasse’s home) explains: Palestine is the one for which Muslim Brotherhood prepared armies – made up from the children of Islam in the Arab and Islamic nations to liberate its land from the abomination and the defilement of the children of the Jews and they watered its pure soil with their honorable blood which sprouted into a jihad that is continuing until the Day of Resurrection and provided a zeal without relenting making the slogan of its children “it is a Jihad for victory or martyrdom.”

The Palestine Section of this memo explains the founding of the Section and notes that Palestine Committees were being established all over the world:

At the end of the seventies, the Shamm [Levant] Countries Movement opened a new section which was called “The Palestine Section” to oversee the affairs of the Ikhwan inside the Occupied Territories. It was considered the liaison between the followers of the Movement inside and outside.

In the beginning of the eighties, the Islamic action for Palestine experienced distinguished leaps. At the inside level, groups and apparatuses were formed to confront the Zionist enemy and they carried different names then such as “The Palestinian Mujahedeen” and other names. At the outside level, a number of associations, Islamic youths and students unions were formed to ally [sic] the masses in order to render the Palestinian cause victorious.

The memo calls on the Palestine Committees, to work to “increase the financial and the moral support for Hamas” to “fight surrendering solutions,” and to publicize and focus on “the savagery of the Jews.”

The amended bylaws attached to the 1991 letter explains that the Palestine Committee in America will be composed of the heads of the following organizations and committees:

1. Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
2. Occupied Land Fund (OLF, which later changed its name to the HLF)
3. United Association for Studies and Research (UASR)
4. Rehabilitation and Coordination Committee
5. Political Work and Foreign Relations Committee
6. Money and Investments Committee

CAIR was not created until 1994 which explains why it is not listed here.

The remarks at the end of the bylaws note that the International Shura Council (leadership council) directed them to achieve eight goals. Among them were:
-”Collecting of donations for the Islamic Resistance Movement from the Ikhwan and others.”
-”Bringing to the media light the case of [HAMAS founder] Sheik Ahmad Yasin and his ailing condition.”
-”Making use of what relationships the Ikhwan have in all fields and gatherings to serve the cause.”

Additionally, the internal memo notes that the president of IAP was a member of a section affiliated with the executive council. This establishes that these organizations, including IAP, were members of the Palestine Committee established by the Muslim Brotherhood, and that their leaders sat on the Committee.

In another development yesterday, prosecutors introduced a wiretap conversation between defendants Shukri Abu Bakr and Ghassan Elashi, in which they discussed IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson. Emerson first uncovered the ties between HLF and HAMAS in his 1994 PBS documentary, Jihad in America.

In the Aug. 2, 1995 call, Abu Bakr and Elashi discuss a Dallas Morning News editorial concerning U.S. plans to extradite Hamas political leader Musa Abu Marzook, who had been arrested while entering the country at John F. Kennedy airport in New York on an Israeli request that he face murder charges there.

Elashi reads from the editorial, which called for Marzook to be deported, but not to Israel. To release him, the editorial said, would send a message that America offers refuge to terrorists. According to a government transcript of the call, Elashi invokes Emerson’s name after the editorial: “Sadly, Arab and Islamic organizations in America are perceiving the action against Mr. Marzook as ‘anti-Islam’ and ‘anti-Arab.’”

“He says ’sadly,’” Elashi repeats. “Doesn’t that bring you to Steven Emerson?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Abu Bakr responds. “Don’t be surprised if Steven Emerson is the one who wrote it.”

Elashi also expresses concern that the Morning News “is referring to us in a way or another” when it mentions the FBI has noted terrorist cells were operating in North Texas.

The trial continues Wednesday with the cross examination of Agent Burns by defendant Abdulrahman Odeh’s lawyer.

The two were arrested on Saturday following a traffic stop in Goose Creek. The two are charged with possession of an explosive device.

“He was in possession of pipe bombs, and materials used to make other bombs,” said 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson.

“We won’t know definitely what each substance is until it’s tested by the FBI (website) ,” said Sheriff Wayne Dewitt.

Court documents reveal Mohammed admitted to buying materials at Wal-Mart. Aside from what was found in the car, Sheriff DeWitt said their behavior at the time of the stop raised officers’ suspicions.

During the bond hearing, Megahed appeared calm while Mohamed seemed agitated and was seen chanting. One unanswered question, what were the pair doing in Goose Creek?

“Both of them were on their way to a beach in North Carolina to celebrate Ahmed’s birthday,” said Defense Lawyer Dennis Rhoad.

The brother of one of the defendants was in court for support. Berkeley County officials say the two don’t appear to be involved in any terrorist activity. The FBI says they are still investigating to see if there is a link.