"Obama prayer speaker comes from group feds say is linked to Hamas" - Politico

Politico is reporting that the leader of a U.S. Muslim Organization linked (the organization) by Federal Prosecutors to Hamas has been asked to pray at a prayer service for Barack Obama at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. the day after he becomes President:

One of the religious leaders invited to address Barack Obama’s inaugural prayer service Wednesday heads an Islamic group named by federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator in a terrorism-fundraising trial in Texas.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is scheduled to join Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis offering prayers for the new president and his family during a service at the National Cathedral in Washington, organizers announced Friday.

Mattson’s group calls itself “the largest Muslim umbrella organization” in North America. However, in May 2007, federal prosecutors included ISNA on a list of nearly 300 co-conspirators filed in a criminal case charging that the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas, funneled more than $12 million to Hamas.

The U.S. government designated Hamas as a terrorist group in 1995.

A trial in Dallas in 2007 for the foundation and five of its leaders ended with acquittals and mistrials. However, Holy Land and the five officials were convicted of all 108 charges in a second trial last year.

A spokeswoman for the inaugural, Linda Douglass, hailed Ms. Mattson as “a widely respected faith leader with a stellar reputation.”

“We are delighted to have her as part of a program that is inclusive, welcomes people of all faiths and is consistent with the president elect’s message of unity,” the spokeswoman told Politico Friday. “All of these are people who preach tolerance.”

Ms. Douglass noted that Ms. Mattson appeared with little controversy at an interfaith service prior to the Democratic National Convention in Denver last August. However, that appearance came prior to the jury’s guilty verdicts in November affirming the existence of the conspiracy to aid Hamas. Mattson’s group, ISNA, was never named as a defendant in the Holy Land case. Jurors were not asked to determine what role, if any, ISNA played in aid of Hamas. . . . MORE