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Shukri Abu-Baker, left, President and CEO of The Holy Land Foundation and an unidentified woman (file picture).

After 19 days of deliberations, the jury in the Holy Land trial terror finance returned a verdict Thursday afternoon. But it will be three days before we find out if they ruled for guilt or innocence.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Stickney said the verdict will remain sealed until Monday morning when U.S. District Judge Joe Fish returns.

“I do not have the authority or the power to read it to the court,” he said.

The five Holy Land defendants, all but one a U.S. citizen, were accused of raising more than $12 million and wiring it to Palestinian charity committees, who would then use it to provide aid to needy families.

The government put on evidence attempting to show that those committees were staffed and controlled by the violent Islamic group Hamas, which has sponsored hundreds of suicide bombings often targeting Israeli civilians.

The government’s chief witness about the link between the Palestinian charity committees was an Israeli Shin Bet counterterrorism official testifying under a pseudonym. He was able to name board members for nearly all the committees who were Hamas, even identifying some as members of Hamas military section, which helps coordinate suicide bombings. Some of the affiliations were such common knowledge in the region that he said they were written about in the press.

The defense, however, countered with the former No. 2 intelligence official at the State Department, Edward Abington. He told jurors that although he got daily CIA briefings for years while stationed in Jerusalem as consul general, he never was told that the Palestinian charity committees Holy Land gave money to were part of Hamas.

Prosecutors also told jurors that Holy Land’s humanitarian contributions helped Hamas’s social wing win popular support for its violent agenda against the Israelis. The former Richardson charity, according to the government, also singled out survivors of suicide bombers for support, helping recruit new martyrs. One defendant, Abdulrahman Odeh, head of Holy Land’s New Jersey office, personally gave money to the family of the Hamas master bombmaker credited with developing the suicide belt.

The case included evidence, mostly wiretapped phone calls and videos of often fiery U.S. fundraising rallies, showing that some of the defendants were virulently anti-semitic. And jurors were shown scenes of violence — none, however, attributed directly to the actions of the defendants, all of whom are of Palestinian descent.

The Holy Land jury may have deliberated longer than any other jury in state history. In queries sent to hundreds of lawyers through the Dallas Bar Association, none remembered a jury considering a case for 19 days. Nationwide, there are examples of both criminal and civil state and federal court trials where juries have deliberated for months.

Failure to secure convictions on the most serious terrorism support charges comes on the heels of two high-stakes losses in two other similar terrorism financing cases.

Earlier this year, an Illinois jury acquitted a Chicago-area businessman on charges that he and a co-defendant aided Palestinian terrorists. Two years earlier, a Florida professor also was found not guilty on similar terrorism-support charges, and the jury deadlocked on several other charges.

The government, however, has gotten guilty verdicts particularly in New York and Virginia on terrorism support charges, but none are against what was once the largest American Muslim charity. The courtroom losses in Florida, Illinois and now Dallas are examples of the difficulties in terrorism financing cases.