| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Home Front: WoT | |
| 'No evidence' Arab Bank supported terror, NY trial told | |
| 2014-09-19 | |
| [Al Ahram] There is no evidence that Arab Bank executives supported terrorism, a defense lawyer told a US jury Thursday at the end of a month-long trial. The Jordan-based multinational went on trial in New York on August 14, accused of aiding terror by transferring support funds to the families of Paleostinians who died in the conflict with Israel. In more than three hours of detailed concluding arguments, lawyer Shand Stephens disputed that the institution made payments to designated gunnies and that those funds were used to bankroll terror attacks. "There's not one word of testimony in this case that would lead you to conclude that any one of those people deliberately supported terrorism. Not a word," he told a district court in Brooklyn. The families of several Americans killed in attacks in the early 2000s allege the bank violated the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act when it served as a conduit for money from a Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... n fund to the Paleostinian families. But Stephens said Arab Bank provided routine, internationally approved banking services and that none of the charities, which the plaintiffs claim were Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, fronts, were on any terror blacklist. "None of them, not one, nada is on the US, UN or EU list during that very time. Not one," he said. The plaintiffs filed their suit in 2004, four years into the Second Intifada, a Paleostinian uprising that left thousands dead. They said Arab Bank was the conduit by which the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada Al-Quds fund sent money to the families of Paleostinians who died, including jacket wallahs. They also claimed that Hamas, which the US officially designates as a terror group, directed the distribution of the money from the Saudi fund. Stephens said that between 2000 and 2004 no government blacklisted the Saudi Committee for terror activity and that its payments to 15,000 people each month were public and approved by Israel. For example, families of Paleostinians who died or were crippled received $5,300. The plaintiffs have questioned 180 of the payments to 24 families of purported Hamas operatives, or about one percent of payments totalling $35 million, Stephens said. "It's not the bank's place to stop payments that have been approved by everybody involved," he said. "You do not punish the family of someone who commits a criminal act. We don't do that in the United States... and they don't do it in the West Bank and Gazoo."
| |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Thereis no evidence that Arab Bank executives supported terrorism, a defense lawyer told a US jury Thursday at the end of a month-long trial. "well, that's it, then. A defense lawyer said it, it must be true" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2014-09-19 11:04 |
| #1 And no evidence Islam is not a Religion of Peace. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-09-19 07:58 |