Mohammed Hammoud, the first person convicted on an anti-terror statute aimed at preventing American funding of terror groups, will be in court Wednesday seeking to get out of jail after serving 10 years of a 155-year sentence.
Hammoud was convicted in 2002 of fraud, racketeering, and helping to raise money for the Hizbullah terrorist group by running an illegal smuggling and money laundering scheme. He was also convicted of violating federal racketeering laws.
In all, Hammoud and his brother Chawki smuggled some $8 million of cigarettes for which they failed to pay the appropriate taxes. Altogether, 18 people were arrested in the case, including Hammoud's wife, who pleaded guilty on the smuggling charges.
At the time of Hammoud's arrest, federal investigators found a great deal of material connecting him with Hizbullah. Prosecutors could connect only a few thousand dollars of the money he stole with direct donations to Hamas, and most of the lengthy sentence was due to Hammoud's violation of a series of other laws.
However, prosecutors said that given his devotion to the terror group, it was highly likely that Hammoud had sent the terror group the lion's share of the money he defrauded the government out of. In addition, prosecutors said they had evidence that Hammoud was planning to murder federal prosecutors and burn down the building where the evidence against him was being held.
Hammoud had been in frequent contact with leaders of Hizbullah, including the group's reputed military chief, Sheik Abbas Harake, and Sheik Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, a top Hizbullah cleric. Chief prosecutor Robert J. Conrad, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said after Hammoud's 2002 conviction that the “verdict signals that terrorists and their supporters will not be safe from prosecution.”
Now, however, Hammoud's attorneys are appealing the conviction – claiming that it was far too harsh, and that their client should have been sentenced to no more than eight years in prison, given the crimes he committed. In documents filed with the court, Hammoud's attorneys said that “the overwhelming evidence here is that Mr. Hammoud's original sentence is a miscarriage of justice.”
Hammoud's appeal is based on a 2005 ruling that said that sentencing guidelines for the anti-terror statute are advisory, not mandatory.
However, prosecutors noted in their court filing that those guidelines provide for a maximum 15-year sentence – and that the vast majority of Hammoud's sentence was for his other numerous crimes. The North Carolina Appellate court will consider Hammoud's sentence in a hearing Wednesday.
Reports quoted Hammoud as saying at the time of his sentencing that he was really misunderstood and that he was not a terrorist, but a “lover of peace and freedom." He said, "Perhaps I went in the wrong way to achieve my goal. I admitted that, and I'm sorry for that."