The Counterterrorism Blog is reporting that the prosecution in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) has filed its motion responding to the amicus brief filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). As a previous post has discussed, the CAIR brief requested that it be removed from list of unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. As the blog observes, the government’s response “definitively” links CAIR to Hamas when it states:
In the instant case, striking CAIR’™s name from the attachment to the Trial Brief will not prevent its conspiratorial involvement with HLF, and others affiliated with Hamas, from becoming a matter of public record. That has already occurred as a consequence of the presentation of evidence at trial.
Previous posts have also discussed documents released during the trial that further illustrate the relationship between CAIR, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The blog report also raises the question of CAIR’s alleged declining membership, an issue raised in it’s brief as an illustration of the harm suffered by CAIR as a result of the designation. The the government motion points to a recent Washington Times article that argued from an examination of tax returns that CAIR indeed was suffering from declining membership and observed that CAIR disputed the article’s findings at the time. A a previous post has observed, the whole issue is confounded because the Times article did not specify whether or not the CAIR membership figures were actually reported in the tax documents or if the newspaper relied upon an extrapolation from donor revenues. In any event, it appears that the issue of CAIR’s membership status remains somewhat of a mystery.