Fathi Ahmad Mohammad Hammad, the former interior minister of Hamas on Friday slammed the United States for designating him a ‘global terrorist’, accusing Washington of backing the “Israeli occupation”, Germany’s DPA news agency reports.
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The leader of a militant faction in the Gaza Strip warned American citizens against coming to the coastal enclave on Saturday, days after the U.S. designated former Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad as an global terrorist.
Hamas has been ruling the Gaza Strip since violently seizing control of the territory in 2007.
The United States charged that Hammad, 55, a former interior minister for the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, coordinated terrorist cells.
The US on Friday designated senior Hamas leader Fathi Ahmad Mohammad Hammad a “global terrorist” who is a threat to US nationals and interests.
The State Department described the first man, Omar Diaby, as the leader of a group of about 50 foreign fighters in Syria that has taken part in terrorist operations with Nusra Front, an insurgent group that has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
He also established Al-Aqsa TV, which the State Department suggested is a “primary Hamas media outlet with programs created to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood”.
In Gaza, Hammad has predicted that Israel would cease to exist by 2022. Afterward in his salon Hammad sat on a couch and spoke with the Post.
He said: “The Americans always claim that they stand by oppressed people and they stand by the Palestinians, but in reality, they do not”.
The US designation against the Hamas legislator – widely covered and welcomed by Israeli media outlets – came shortly after Washington signed a new 10-year military pact with the Tel Aviv, granting the regime unprecedented access to US weaponry and other forms of military aid.
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Hammad spent six years in an Israeli prison, from 1988 to 1994.
