The nine are the first to be prosecuted under a 1996 federal law banning material support for foreign groups the U.S. government deems to be "terrorist." They are charged with raising funds for Hezbollah, an organization in Lebanon that fought both against Israeli military forces and the right-wing militia backed by Tel Aviv that occupied the southern part of that country for 22 years. Israel continues to control a small part of territory in Lebanon, after being forced to withdraw from most of the occupied land due to resistance from the Lebanese people.

Defense lawyers argue that by banning contributions to Hezbollah by U.S. residents the government is violating the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act and depriving contributors of their First Amendment right to free speech and free association.

The defendants and about a dozen others are also accused of smuggling cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan to avoid the higher tobacco taxes there and of breaking immigration regulations in order to obtain U.S. residency. Jessica Fortune, the wife of one of those accused of being a Hezbollah supporter, was found guilty September 24 of conspiring with her husband to break the immigration laws. She will be sentenced at a later date. None of the accused has been charged with any act of terrorism or violence.

The government mounted a massive operation in the case, deploying 200 FBI agents and other cops in raids on a number of homes and businesses in July 2000 in Michigan and throughout the Charlotte area. Cop agencies and the capitalist news media smeared those arrested as "terrorists" and the affidavit laying out the charges contained vague references to military training in the Charlotte area. Nearly every report in the press repeated the inflammatory quote from the affidavit that an unnamed government stool pigeon "believes that if [Hezbollah] issued an authorization to execute a terrorist act in the United States," Mohamad Hammoud, the supposed ringleader, "would not hesitate in carrying it out."

However, despite the prosecution having access to computers and files confiscated in the police raids, they have presented no evidence to back up this claim. Instead, they charge the nine with working to supply Hezbollah with money and equipment, such as night vision goggles and radar.

The defendants, who have all entered not guilty pleas, are expected to go on trial next April. The prosecution will employ secret witnesses, secret reports, and hearsay evidence of what was said in wiretapped telephone conversations. The actual tapes of some of these conversations have been destroyed. The attorney for Said Mohammed Harb says tapes made by U.S. and Canadian authorities of Harb's conversations contain "no foreign intelligence information at all" and only once mentions Hezbollah in passing. He also says that government reports on these wiretappings "never so much as hint at any terrorist or clandestine intelligence gathering activities" but rather focus on "alleged immigration fraud and bank fraud."

But prosecutors claim that their wiretaps are valid because terrorist activity often is not obvious. "Innocuous sounding conversations may in fact be signals of important activity," they wrote in court papers.

Meanwhile, Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked for intelligence documents in the case to be kept secret, on the grounds of "national security."

Dean Hazlewood is a textile worker and member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 1516 in Kannapolis, North Carolina.  
 
 
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