Islamic Charity Denies It Aided Hamas

A Muslim charity accused by the government of funding the militant Islamic group Hamas on Tuesday urged a federal appeals court to throw out a ruling that upheld a freeze on the organization’s financial assets.

The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development denied it ever donated money or provided services to Hamas, considered a foreign terrorist group by the State Department. The foundation said it provides relief to refugees, orphans and victims of disasters.

“We want to make charitable and humanitarian contributions,” John Cline, a foundation attorney, told a panel of judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Cline alleged that the government violated the group’s constitutional rights to a trial, freedom of religion and speech, and protection against unwarranted searches and seizures when the Treasury Department froze the group’s assets and closed its offices in a December 2001 raid.

A federal judge last summer upheld the department’s actions; it also ruled that the charity may challenge the government’s search of its property.

Cline told judges that using an administrative procedure to seize the foundation’s offices denied the charity proper notice of the investigation and the chance to defend itself.

Cline said the group also did not get a chance to cross-examine government witnesses.

Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter said agents acted under special circumstances allowed in the Bush administration’s fight against global terrorism, based on overwhelming evidence linking the charity to Hamas.

“We are dealing with a foreign relations, national security issue,” Letter said.

According to court documents: “Holy Land’s funds and other personal property are precisely the sort of transient, highly mobile assets that could easily and quickly be removed to another jurisdiction, destroyed, or concealed, if advance warning were given.”

Officials say their conservative estimate is that Hamas has raised several million dollars in the United States over the last decade.