FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)The U.S. Senate approved an increase in funding for the protection of religious organizations.
The conference report for 2010 passed Tuesday includes $19 million in funding for a grant program to improve security for non-profits and religious institutions. The funds allocated for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program represent a $4 million increase from present levels.
Jewish groups, including United Jewish Communities and the Orthodox Union, had lobbied for the funding increase and are lauding its passage. The House of Representatives approved the funding increase last week; all that remains is for President Obama to sign the bill.
“Since Sept. 11th, nonprofits generally, and Jewish communal institutions specifically, have been the victim of an alarming number of threats and attacks,” said William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of UJC/The Jewish Federations of North America’s Washington office. “The Nonprofit Security Grant Program is a proven resource that helps supplement the work of local and federal law enforcement to keep us safe.”
Informant in N.J. Sting Pleads Guilty
The informant who helped bring charges against a number of rabbis and politicians in New Jersey pleaded guilty to money laundering.
Solomon Dwek admitted Tuesday to trying to cheat a bank out of $50 million as part of a plea bargain, Reuters reported.
In return for cooperating with authorities, prosecutors asked Dwek be sentenced to nine to 11 years in prison for the offense, which carries a 30-year maximum term.
In 2006 Dwek began working undercover for police after he was charged with money laundering. He helped gather evidence in a government probe into an alleged illegal operation run by members of New Jersey’s insular Syrian-Jewish community that laundered millions of dollars.
The investigation expanded into public corruption charges against several New Jersey politicians and dozens of arrests this summer.
Seattle Jewish Federation Gunman Retrial Begins
The retrial of a gunman who carried out a fatal shooting at a Jewish organization in Seattle in 2006 is set to begin.
Opening statements were scheduled to start Wednesday.
Defense attorneys for Naveed Haq will try to convince jurors that their client was legally insane when he charged into the Greater Seattle Jewish Federation, shot federation worker Pam Waechter dead and wounded five others, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
A jury in 2008 said it could not determine whether Haq was in control of his faculties at the time of the shooting, thus making him accountable for his actions.
During the shooting incident, Haq made demands that U.S. troops pull out of Iraq and that Israel stop “pushing around” Palestinians, the Post-Intelligencer reported.
Prosecutors at the retrial will introduce new evidence of phone conversations between Haq and his mother recorded while he was incarcerated in which the defendant says he carried out the attack in order to become a martyr.
“You know I wanted to go to heaven. I want to be a jihadi,” he said in the phone recordings, according to the Post-Intelligencer. “I did it to be a jihadi.”
Supreme Court Denies Appeal for Terror Victim
The parents of an American teenager killed in a terrorist attack in Israel cannot collect damages from an alleged funder of Hamas.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal Tuesday brought by the parents of David Boim, a 17-year-old American killed in a 1996 drive-by shooting in the West Bank community of Beit El, Ha’aretz reported.
The Boim family, originally from New York City, moved to Israel several years ago. They had sued Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah and numerous U.S.-based Islamic fund-raising organizations, saying they contributed money to Hamas and should be held fiscally responsible for Boim’s death.
Salah, a resident of suburban Chicago, served 4 1/2 years in Israeli prisons in the 1990s after $90,000 that authorities allege was meant to fund Hamas was discovered in his hotel room in eastern Jerusalem. He was in prison when Boim was killed.
A U.S. law that could have made Salah liable in Boim’s death was put into effect while he was in prison. However, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said it did not apply to Salah because he was incarcerated at the time.
The Palestinian Authority tried one man responsible for the Boim’s death and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. A second man escaped but later died in a suicide bombing.