False Evidence Used Against Muslim Charity

The LA Times reports that declassified government documents suggest the evidence used against Holy Land Foundation was fabricated by the government. According to a summary of surveillance, Holy Land's former executive director made explicit anti-Semitic comments. However, none of the quotes included in the summary were in the 13-page transcript of the conversation. Under the federal Classified Information Procedures Act, the defense attorneys are prohibited from sharing the material with their clients, and thus unable to prove that the statements were never said or misunderstood. "Throughout the run-up to trial, the government has insisted that the defendants can learn what is contained in the [surveillance] intercepts by reading the so-called 'summaries' of those intercepts," defense attorneys said in their papers. But the recently disclosed transcript, attorneys said, shows 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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