During interrogation by Israel, El-Halabi admitted to being a member of Hamas, undergoing terrorist training and being tasked to infiltrate World Vision.
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Israel said on Tuesday it had arrested and charged a United Nations employee for allegedly aiding Islamist movement Hamas, in the second such case involving a humanitarian worker in a week.
The Shin Bet on Thursday indicted Mohammed Halabi, head of World Vision’s Gaza program, for allegedly transferring some 7.2 million dollars from the global charity organization to Hamas.
Details of such investigations and confessions, often gathered after a lengthy period under interrogation and with no initial access to a lawyer, are nearly impossible to independently verify.
It said they were part of a wider Israeli effort “to tighten the siege of the Gaza Strip by prosecuting worldwide relief organisations”.
Hamas labeled the allegations “incorrect and baseless”. Building supplies meant to support farming projects were transferred to Hamas for constructing tunnels and military installations, according to the Shin Bet.
In 2015, he allegedly helped build a naval marina for use by Hamas’s military in northern Gaza. Halabi siphoned off almost $10 million to fund Hamas terror projects, and ferried physical aid – food, blankets, tents, and much more – from the residents of Gaza for whom they were intended, providing them to members of his al-Aqsa gang.
Following today’s indictment of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) aid worker in Gaza for supporting Hamas terrorist activities (see press release below), UN Watch is calling on UNDP chief Helen Clark, a candidate to be the next UN Secretary-General, to draw conclusions, and for Ban Ki-moon to urgently establish an independent, global commission of inquiry to investigate the apparently pervasive subversion in Gaza of UN and other worldwide humanitarian aid funds by Hamas.
UNDP said that it would respond to the allegations soon.
Israel said it had informed UNDP of the charges but the United Nations agency did not immediately respond to the claims. Through this project, UNDP has removed more than one million tons of rubble as well as 2,761 unexploded ordnances. A spokesperson, Sami Abu Zurhi, called the accusations “false and baseless”, saying they were created to allow Israel to strengthen its “siege” of Gaza.
World Vision added that al-Halabi has worked with the group for 10 years, and that they have “no reason to believe” the allegations against their employee are true. That suspect, Mohammed El Halabi, denied the charges, as did Hamas, while World Vision said it had yet to see evidence to back up Israel’s allegations.
Following Halabi’s arrest, World Vision pointed out that he had been in custody for 50 days and spent about half of them without any legal counsel.
It said that Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades wanted that individual because of “connections” between Save the Children and USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. According to the Shin Bet, that amounts to about 60 percent of World Vision’s budget to Gaza. “They are part of a plan to further the siege of the Gaza Strip by means of global aid institutions”, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
The difference in numbers was “hard to reconcile”, said Keith Jenkins, the president of World Vision.
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Parts of Gaza were heavily damaged in the war between Hamas and Israel in 2014 and are still being rebuilt. But according to declassified intelligence reports, these supplies are routinely stolen by Hamas in order to serve the group’s terrorist purposes.
