{"id":2376,"date":"2009-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/muslim-charity-member-gets-65-years-in-prison\/"},"modified":"2009-05-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T00:00:00","slug":"muslim-charity-member-gets-65-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2009\/05\/muslim-charity-member-gets-65-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"MUSLIM CHARITY MEMBER GETS 65 YEARS IN PRISON"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DALLAS (AP) &#8211; A founding member of what was once the nation&#8217;s largest Muslim charity today was sentenced to 65 years in prison for funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.<\/p>\n<p>50-year-old Shukri Abu Baker, of Garland, was the first Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development to be sentenced.<\/p>\n<p>The November convictions of the five men on 108 charges followed a mistrial.<\/p>\n<p>The government alleged the charity sent more than $12 million to Hamas. It&#8217;s illegal to offer Hamas support because it was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1995. The group has taken credit for hundreds of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians.<\/p>\n<p>Abu Baker told the judge today quote &quot;I did it because I cared, not at the behest of Hamas.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Holy Land&#8217;s supporters say the prosecution was a politically motivated product of Bush&#8217;s &quot;war on terror&quot; and a prime example of post-Sept. 11, anti-Islam hysteria.<\/p>\n<p><em>Information from The Dallas Morning News: http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><br \/><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kvia.com\/Global\/story.asp?S=10431150&amp;nav=menu193_2\" ><br \/>GO TO ORIGINAL &ndash; WORLDNOW<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DALLAS (AP) &#8211; A founding member of what was once the nation&#8217;s largest Muslim charity today was sentenced to 65 years in prison for funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. 50-year-old Shukri Abu Baker, of Garland, was the first Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development to be sentenced. The November [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}