Court-appointed attorneys for defendants in the Holy Land Foundation case are asking a judge to delay the September trial because they haven’t been paid a fraction of what they say they need to put up a defense. 

Four of the five defendants in the high-profile terrorism financing case are on the public dole. Since preparing to mount a new defense after an October mistrial, the court-appointed attorneys have so far received $16,500 in fees and expenses and $6,000 more for airfare. 

The first trial has cost taxpayers more than $2.4 million, and some bills remain unpaid. 

“Counsel can no longer continue to work on this case, nor effectively prepare for trial, because funding has not been approved for experts, consultants and for the expenses associated with representation,” wrote attorney Theresa Duncan, one of two attorneys defending Shukri Abu Baker, former Holy Land CEO, in a motion filed earlier this month seeking to have the trial delayed. 

But prosecutors say the retrial should remain on schedule for Sept. 8. 

“It would appear that the defense is starting from scratch in preparing for this case, despite having had several years to prepare for the first trial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Shapiro wrote last week in response to the defense motion. “By eliminating obviously wasteful expenditures, there is no reason why defense counsel cannot effectively represent their clients at the upcoming trial.” 

The defendants are accused of using the former Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation to raise millions of dollars in the U.S. for the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel. 

American authorities declared Hamas a terrorist organization and banned all support for the group in 1995, citing its use of suicide bombers to target Israeli civilians. 

The government alleges that Holy Land worked in connection with similar Hamas-sympathetic charities across the Middle East and Europe. Defending the case means spending money to translate mountains of documents, hiring experts and countering government evidence gathered worldwide. 

The funding hang-up, according to the defense attorneys, is with the Fifth Circuit Court, which must approve their budget for the retrial. They submitted it in late March to U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis, the presiding judge over the retrial. But Judge Solis, who was new to the case and familiarizing himself with it, did not send it on to the circuit court until late June because he needed additional information from defense attorneys. 

The request for funding has been pending before Fifth Circuit Judge Jennifer Elrod for nearly a month. She declined to comment this week. 

“There is a complicated, formal and careful process to make sure that money is paid out to lawyers defending indigent defendants appropriately,” said Joe St. Amant, who helps manage the Fifth Circuit’s program for court-appointed attorney payments. “This is government money, and it has cross-checks.” 

Records detailing exactly how the defense is spending the taxpayer funds are under seal and not publicly available. This is standard in federal court so that the government cannot know how the defense is preparing for trial. 

But in Ms. Duncan’s motion, she noted that one defense attorney, whom she doesn’t name, hasn’t been paid at all. 

Lack of funds for airfare is a big obstacle, Ms. Duncan argued. Because some defense attorneys are in New Mexico and New York, they must travel to meet with their clients. Phone consultations are kept at a minimum because of fears that the FBI is still wire-tapping the defendants, the lawyers say. 

The government countered by pointing out that two of the defendants chose to have out-of-state attorneys appointed to the case, rather than accept local appointments. 

“Had the defendants been treated as every other indigent defendant, their counsel would have been locally appointed and would not have generated travel expenses,” Ms. Shapiro wrote. 

In their motion, the defense speculates that the government has spent $50 million on the Holy Land investigation, which began as an intelligence inquiry in the early 1990s. They also argue that the Justice Department is “unhindered by any budgetary constraints” and is outpacing the defense in preparing for the new trial by being able to hire new experts and travel to Israel to gather more and better evidence.  

Ms. Shapiro wrote that the $50 million figure is “completely wrong, highly misleading and appears designed solely for the consumption of the media. … The costs of this prosecution are but a small fraction of what the defense has speculated.” 

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to say how much the government has spent on the case, citing the long-standing gag order. 

Judge Solis has given no indication as to when he plans to rule on whether to delay the trial.