The Justice Department’s shellacking of Hamas continued today with a historic indictment. Last month, DOJ indicted Hamas’s American funding arm — the purported “charitable” organization known as the Holy Land Foundation. (See). Today, in a historic indictment, DOJ used the RICO statute to brand Hamas a criminal-racketeering enterprise, and charged three defendants — Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, of suburban Chicago, Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, of suburban Washington, D.C., and, most significantly, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a former U.S. resident who currently resides in Damascus, Syria — with participating in a 15-year conspiracy to finance suicide bombings and other terrorist activities. Marzook is formerly chief and now deputy chief of the Hamas Political Bureau, which functions as the highest-ranking leadership body in the Hamas organization.

The indictment was obtained by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Currently, Pat is best known nationally as the independent prosecutor chosen by Attorney General Ashcroft to investigate the Valerie Plame leak. In New York though, he spent years investigating al Qaeda, obtained the original indictments against bin Laden, successfully prosecuted the bombers of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and was my partner on the Blind Sheik case back in 1995, among many other things. This is a great day for counter-terrorism. The indictment is here.