Federal prosecutors argued Tuesday that a suburban Washington, D.C., man conspired for years to aid the militant Palestinian group Hamas by acting as an archivist and information conduit from his home in the United States.
In the second day of closing arguments in the trial of Abdelhaleem Ashqar and Muhammad Salah, Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Ferguson detailed a series of secretly recorded phone calls between Ashqar and top Hamas officials in the early 1990s.
In a December 1993 phone call, Ashqar, a university professor, spoke with a man identified as Constantine about the need to kill a rogue Hamas member who had murdered a fellow Muslim, Ferguson said.
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“Ashqar’s the one who is entrusted to receive this call, this top secret matter. They’re conspiring and talking about murder,” Ferguson said.
Ashqar and Salah, a U.S. citizen from Bridgeview, are charged with being leading members of Hamas who used the safe haven of the United States to coordinate operations and transfer funds for the militant organization.
In his argument, Ferguson also pointed to a series of Hamas-related documents the FBI discovered in a secret search of Ashqar’s Oxford, Miss., home in December 1993.
Among the documents were minutes of meetings between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian officials, as well as minutes of high-level meetings between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Agents also recovered address books and records of millions of dollars sent to Hamas cells and operatives via money transfers, which prosecutors allege Ashqar was instrumental in facilitating.
He is the “conduit for communication, the conduit for information, the conduit for money. He is guiding, steering and directing … all of this, and all from America,” Ferguson said.
In another recorded conversation on Oct. 24, 1993, Ashqar and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a top Hamas leader, laugh as Rantisi relays information about the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by militants, the prosecutor said.
Two days later, Ashqar received a fax saying the two soldiers had been executed, Ferguson said.
Ashqar’s attorney, William Moffitt, has argued that Ashqar was never involved in planning or committing any acts of violence and is a peaceful man.
He said that Ashqar never tried to conceal his efforts to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel and spoke about it publicly throughout his time in the U.S.
In addition, Moffitt has said federal authorities recorded the allegedly criminal conversations and seized the documents more than a decade ago.
Closing arguments from Salah’s attorney are scheduled to begin Wednesday morning.
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