An Arizona man facing prison time for lying to authorities in a terrorism-funding investigation could have been a big help to authorities because of his past involvement with a Muslim charity that aided Hamas, an FBI agent testified Friday.

Other testimony, from relatives and other supporters, portrayed Akram Musa Abdallah as a community pillar and family leader who worked to help people and build bridges between faiths.

Abdallah, a 55-year-old Mesa resident, was to have been sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court on his guilty plea to one count of making a false statement during 2007 interviews with FBI agents concerning his mid-1990s fundraising for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

But the sentencing was postponed until Feb. 18 because Judge Neil Wake ran out of time Friday after hearing hours of testimony and because he wants lawyers to submit briefs on several sentencing issues.

More than 30 people submitted letters in support of Abdallah, and more than 60 supporters packed the courtroom Friday.

Five Holy Land leaders were convicted in a Dallas federal court last year of bankrolling schools and social welfare programs that prosecutors said were controlled by Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since overrunning the rival Fatah government in 2007. Hamas has taken responsibility for hundreds of suicide bombings targeting Israeli citizens.

The United States had designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995. Holy Land received the designation in December 2001.

The FBI agent, Robert Miranda, said Abdallah wasn't a Holy Land insider but his volunteer work in the Phoenix area on behalf of the group would have made him a "fantastic witness" because he could have testified about its practices and beliefs.

"He was the best of both worlds," Miranda said. "From the perspective of an investigator, he sure had a lot of connections and knowledge that nobody else seemed to have."

Abdallah's fundraising role was known through FBI wiretaps but he falsely denied any substantial involvement with Holy Land when interviewed by agents during the Dallas-based investigation, Miranda said.

Abdallah's character witnesses belittled the government's case and said he is an upstanding person.

"This is a man who should not be here," Dr. Maher Abdallah, a California physician who is a cousin of the defendant, told Wake. "He's been nothing but a role model."

The cousin acknowledged Abdallah might have spoken falsely to the FBI, but said it was during voluntary interviews while being hounded by multiple agents. "He thought he was helping."