The US Supreme Court has announced that it had decided not to hear the appeal of the Holy Land Five, despite the obvious violations of the Sixth Amendment of the constitution that led to the convictions of the five men who headed the HLF and provided humanitarian aid to palestinians.
In 2001, under the emboldened Patriot Act, the Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation and charged its founders with working through charity, orzakat, committees “on behalf of Hamas.” The prosecution’s witness was an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer who was allowed to testify under a pseudonym — the first time in US history that a court allowed this, in a clear violation of the Sixth Amendment which allows the accused to confront their accuser. |
Islamophobia in general
Islamophobia is described as irrational fear of Islam. Holy Land Foundation case is one of the several examples of Islamophobia in today's world. A perceived trend of increasing Islamophobia and Islamophobic Incident during the 2000s has been attributed by commentators to the September 11 attacks, while others associate it with the increased presence of Muslims in the Western world. In May 2002, the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and xenophobia (EUMC), a European Union watchdog, released a report entitled "Summary report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001", which described an increase in Islamophobia-related incidents in European member states post-9/11.