Arab Bank Plc's chairman informed press reporters on Monday his bank was 'Clean' and had actually not supplied funding to Hamas, talking after his 1^st day as a defense witness in the long-awaited civil terrorism-financing test.

A lawsuit, 1^st submitted 10 years back, charges the Jordan-based bank of knowingly maintaining make up operatives of the militant Islamist team and financing millions in repayments for the families of self-destruction bombers as well as those imprisoned or hurt during the Palestinian uprising that started in 2000.

Arab Bank has refuted the accusations, saying it gave routine banking services in conformity with counter-terrorism laws and rules, and also had no purpose of providing support to Hamas, which the US marked as a terrorist company in 1997.

'They're not important,' Arab Bank Chairman Sabih al-Masri said of the plaintiffs' claims outside a government courtroom in Brooklyn. 'The bank never did anything wrong, deliberately or knowingly.'

The bank is 'clean,' al-Masri, 78, added

Throughout his testimony previously on Monday, al-Masri told the court just how the bank's business had actually experienced throughout the uprising, called the 2nd Palestinian Intifada, with many workers not able to obtain to working from banks in the Palestinian territories because of violence and roadblocks.

'There was killing everywhere,' claimed al-Masri, which was a member of the bank's board at the time. 'People were suffering ... Business suffered.'

Al-Masri criticized attacks that Hamas allegedly accomplished on Israel and also in the Palestinian territories as well as the Israeli feedback, claiming that Palestinians as well as Israelis had to discover to live in peace.

Almost 300 U.S. people who were the sufferers, or the member of the family of victims, of militant attacks that Hamas allegedly committed in between 2001 and also 2004 have actually taken legal action against the bank, saying it broke the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, which enables sufferers of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations to seek compensation. The bank might be liable for millions of dollars, Gary Osen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, has said.

It is thought to be the first terrorism-financing case to visit test in the United States.