PALESTINIAN groups celebrated today as Holy Land Foundation Five member Abdulrahman Odeh was released from US imprisonment after 15 years behind bars for allegedly funding terrorism.
Mr Odeh and four others were jailed in 2008 after a court found the Muslim charity guilty of funding Palestinian organisation Hamas, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip.
They were charged with “providing material support for terrorism.”
The Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the US, was designated a terrorist organisation as part of then president George W Bush’s “war on terror.”
Mr Bush said that the government would seize the charity’s assets and close it down, despite official acknowledgment that the financial support that HLF sent to Palestine went to charities that supported widows and orphans living under Israeli occupation –and were also funded by the US government.