'No evidence' Arab Bank supported terror, NY trial told

There is no evidence that Arab Bank executives supported terrorism, a defense lawyer told a US jury today at the end of a month-long trial.
The Jordan-based multinational went on trial in New York on August 14, accused of aiding terror by transferring support funds to the families of Palestinians who died in the conflict with Israel.
In more than three hours of detailed concluding arguments, lawyer Shand Stephens disputed that the institution made payments to designated terrorists and that those funds were used to bankroll terror attacks.
"There's not one word of testimony in this case that would lead you to conclude that any one of those people deliberately supported terrorism. Not a word," he told a district court in Brooklyn.

The families of several Americans killed in attacks in the early 2000s allege the bank violated the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act when it served as a conduit for money from a Saudi Arabian fund to the Palestinian families.
But Stephens said Arab Bank provided routine, internationally approved banking services and that none of the charities, which the plaintiffs claim were Hamas fronts, were on any terror blacklist.

"None of them, not one, nada is on the US, UN or EU list during that very time. Not one," he said.
The plaintiffs filed their suit in 2004, four years into the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that left thousands dead.

They said Arab Bank was the conduit by which the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada Al-Quds fund sent money to the families of Palestinians who died, including suicide bombers.
They also claimed that Hamas, which the US officially designates as a terror group, directed the distribution of the money from the Saudi fund.
Stephens said that between 2000 and 2004 no government blacklisted the Saudi Committee for terror activity and that its payments to 15,000 people each month were public and approved by Israel.
For example, families of Palestinians who died or were crippled received USD 5,300.

The plaintiffs have questioned 180 of the payments to 24 families of purported Hamas operatives, or about one percent of payments totalling USD 35 million, Stephens said.
"It's not the bank's place to stop payments that have been approved by everybody involved," he said.