Consorting with terrorists
After a six-week trial it took only two days for a jury to find that Arab Bank knowingly provided assistance to Hamas…and consequently was complicit in two dozen terrorist attacks Hamas launched between 2001 and 2004 in which Americans were hurt or killed. The case was originally filed a decade ago and this week’s verdict notwithstanding, it is far from over. Damages will be assessed in another trial. Arab Bank…has vowed to appeal, labelling the proceeding “a show trial”, in which it was prevented from providing exonerating evidence by other countries’ laws on bank secrecy. The case was the first test of an anti-terrorism law passed in 1990 in response to the murder of an American tourist by Palestinian militants in 1985.