RECOMMENDED READING: “Exclusive: ADC’s Misleading Sob Story on Elashi Brothers”

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The Algemeiner has published an articled titled “ADC’s Misleading Sob Story on Elashi Brothers.” The article begins

The news release from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) depicts a family torn apart by a heartless bureaucracy. Two brothers, stateless Palestinians, were ‘taken by ICE and the U.S. Air Marshalls (sic) from their children in Texas and sent to Egypt,’ where they are not welcome. The release conveyed the ADC’s ‘extreme disappointment’ over the move. ‘The actions of DHS and ICE are alarming, troubling, and intolerable. ADC has demanded, and will continue to demand, a clear explanation as to why these brothers were deported,’ said ADC Legal Director Abed Ayoub. The brothers are never named. If they were, the explanation would be quite clear. The Investigative Project on Terrorism has confirmed that the men deported last week are Bayan and Basman Elashi. Both are convicted felons tied to a terror-financing network based out of Dallas. And both had final orders of deportation issued against them in 2008 and 2009 that were never appealed, immigration records show. Yet another brother, Ghassan Elashi, was a founder and chairman of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an American fundraising arm for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. HLF was part of the ‘Palestine Committee,’ an umbrella organization created by the Muslim Brotherhood in America to help Hamas politically and financially. Basman Elashi, along with brothers Ghassan and Hazim, also appears on a telephone list of Palestine Committee members. Basman’s entry is just above Nihad Awad, founder and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Elashi brothers also worked for Infocom, a webhosting company in Richardson Tex. Prosecutors say the company received $250,000 from Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who was indicted in the case. Bayan Elashi was Infocom’s chief executive officer. Basman was its logistics and credit manager. In 2004, each was convicted of money laundering, export violations to Libya and Syria involving computer shipments and making false statements to federal officials. In a separate trial a year later, Bayan Elashi was convicted on 10 counts of dealing in the property of a Specially Designated Terrorist for transactions with Marzook, while Basman was convicted on one count.

Read the rest here.

A former FBI analyst has written that the two of the Elashi brothers had personal ties to the Dallas Central Mosque (DCM,) one serving as a board member and the other active in an affiliated Islamic School. After the arrests of the Elashi’s, the DCM hosted fundraising events for their legal defense. The DCM that was described in a 1999 article in a Counterterrorism Journal as:

… considered to be one of the most active centers of Hamas activity in the United States and hosts the leadership and members of both the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). Both organizations are the primary conduits for Hamas activity and fundraising in the United States. (See Note 1)

It should be noted that Mohamed Elibiary, the Department of Homeland Security Advisor identified by four U.S. Congressmen as a potential agent of Muslim Brotherhood influence inside the U.S. government, is a a leader in the Freedom and Justice Foundation (FJF) whose Advisory Council is known to have been comprised of many members associated with the Islamic Association of North Texas which operates the DCM. The most prominent of these Advisory Council members is Dr. Yusuf Kavakci, currently a board member at large of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), who has served as Imam of the DCM. 

(Note 1: The Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International 1999 Fall “The Kavakci Affair: Headscarves, Religious Rights, and Terrorist Front Groups”)

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