UPDATE:
DMN updates:
The jury in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial was unable to reach unanimous decisions on most of the defendants including the Holy Land Foundation itself, U.S. District Judge Joe Fish said Monday. He ordered them back to the jury room to discuss whether further deliberations might allow them to reach a decision. If not, he is likely to declare a hung jury on many counts in the complex case...
One official — Mufid Abdulqader, a top Holy Land fundraiser and former Dallas public works supervisor — was found not guilty on all counts. Two other officials — Mohammad El-Mezain, the Holy Land’s original chairman and endowments director, and Abdulrahman Odeh, the foundation’s New Jersey representative, were acquitted on most of the charges. The jury was hung on the others. But when polled, three jurors told the judge that they did not agree with the verdicts, prompting the judge to send them back to the jury room. “Your verdict must be unanimous and it’s apparent to me from the answers of three members of the jury in respect to my question that the verdicts that I read earlier do not rep the unanimous view of the jury,” Judge Fish said.
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UPDATE: Dallas Morning News reports:
The original chairman and director of endowments of the Holy Land Foundation was found not guilty of supporting terrorism by sending money to charity committees controlled by Hamas.
The jury in the terrorism-financing trial was unable to reach unanimous decisions on three of the six defendants, U.S. District Judge Joe Fish said Monday as he unsealed their verdicts.
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The verdict in the Holy Land terror-funding case will be read this morning, after the jury reached a decision on Thursday. It’s apparently coming this morning, so we should hear soon.
Update 1: Verdict was to be read at 10 AM Central. It’s now 10:17 Central, so it could be very soon.


by Stephan Tawney on October 22, 2007