ABBOTT TORCHES TERROR-TIED CAIR: Formally Requests Suspension of CAIR’s Tax-Exempt Status

I have spent years studying the evidence demonstrating that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) is a terrorist organization operating as a front group for Hamas and its affiliated organizations. I have consulted with FBI agents, CIA agents, local law enforcement officers, and attorneys who specialize in national security law. All of these consultations confirm that CAIR was begun as a Hamas front group to carry out the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-American agenda.

Much, but not all of this evidence, was documented in United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development  et al., 3:04-cr-00240-P (N.D. Texas) (“HLF”).  I have personally invested hundreds of hours reading written documented evidence and listening to audio-taped evidence that had been introduced at the trial.

The evidence shows that CAIR is a criminal terrorist organization. This conclusion is shared by the United States government. The Department of Justice named CAIR in the federal criminal trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development,[1] which concluded with multiple guilty verdicts, as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive conspiracy to fundraise for, and otherwise pursue, the terrorist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Committee, a public relations and fund raising arm of Hamas in the United States.[2]  See generally HLF.[3]  Specifically, CAIR was named as one of the organizations formed by the defendants and co-conspirators to create the appearance of legality in the effort to raise funds and public support for Hamas and its jihad abroad.  As the evidence in the HLF trial demonstrated, these plans were part of the 1993 Philadelphia planning meeting carried out by Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives, a meeting which the FBI secretly recorded pursuant to a lawful court order, the entire transcript of which was introduced into the record at the HLF trial.[4]  Two of the key participants at this Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas planning meeting were Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad.[5]  Ahmad co-founded CAIR, along with CAIR’s executive director Awad, in 1994 soon after this meeting. Ahmad served as CAIR’s chairman of the board until 2005 and Awad still serves as CAIR’s executive director.

Further, the federal prosecutors successfully resisted every effort by CAIR to have the public designation of CAIR as an “unindicted co-conspirator” removed from the court record and concluded as follows in its brief to the court:

Indeed, CAIR’s request to strike its name from the government’s co-conspirator’s list is moot, since its conspiratorial relationship with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) was confirmed by testimony and documentary evidence admitted at trial prior to the date CAIR even filed its brief.[6]

1. After the convictions, CAIR and another co-conspirator filed motions to have their names stricken from the co-conspirator list.  The trial judge refused based on the fact that the evidence fully supported this co-conspirator designation.  (Filed as Doc. No. 1356 in HLF; see also Ex. B to the Declaration of John Stemberger filed in support of Defendant’s opposition to Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment.)
2. A key piece of evidence introduced at the HLF trial and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine Committee-Hamas conspiracy was a “planning memo” which describes the purpose of the “legal” organizations, such as CAIR, that the Muslim Brotherhood sought to establish in the United States:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means.  The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.[7]

1. In addition, the FBI has publicly stated that it will have no formal or official contacts with CAIR precisely because of the evidence that linked CAIR and its senior management to Hamas and its purposes.[8] Finally, in response to a letter from Congresswoman Sue Myrick, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the U.S. Department of Justice recently wrote in relevant part: (above)