Excerpt:
Whatever the outcome, the effects of the Holy Land investigation will be felt for some time.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust still have pending legal requests to be removed from the prosecution's list of some 300 unindicted co-conspirators. While inclusion on the list does not mean anyone committed a crime, it has a similar negative effect, the groups say.
"Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the government's case is tainted by the due process violation it committed when it publicly stigmatized mainstream American-Muslim organizations without providing them a forum to defend themselves," said Hina Shamsi, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in New York who represents ISNA and NAIT.
The government's co-conspirator list incites "fear among American Muslims of discriminatory and unmerited government-imposed stigma," she said. Worse, she adds, "it alienates the very community whose cooperation the government needs for effective counterterrorism efforts."