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An Israeli court has convicted Mohammad el-Halabi, a Gazan aid worker, of transferring almost €50 million in funds to Hamas.
Mr Halabi, the Gaza director of World Vision – a respected Christian aid organisation – was arrested in 2016 and has been in detention ever since.
The Beersheba district court judges said that he was highly sophisticated and that his confession was “coherent, specific and included unique details which he could not have concocted on the spot”.
Israel claims Mr Halabi had been recruited in 2004 by the Hamas military wing and was sent by his handlers to World Vision in order to “gain influence at an international organisation”.
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Israel claims the funds he transferred were used by Hamas, which rules in Gaza, to purchase weapons and material for constructing tunnels used by Hamas militants.
The court acquitted him of the charge of assisting the enemy, ruling he was a Gaza resident and therefore not an Israeli citizen.
Sentencing has been set for July 10th and Mr Halabi faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
His lawyer, Maher Hana, said he would appeal the conviction to the supreme court. He said his client was offered multiple plea bargain deals in which he could have walked free but refused on principle in order to fight for his innocence.
Classified evidence
The defence team claims their client’s confession was made under duress and they noted that nearly all the evidence remains classified for security reasons.
“There is no serious explanation of what, exactly, he did. Until today, Mohammad is asking me ‘did the judge say exactly what he accuses me of doing’?” Mr Hana told reporters outside the court.
The head of the UN human rights office in the Palestinian territories said there had been “enormous pressure on Mr Halabi to confess in the absence of evidence”.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said the guilty verdict against Mr Halabi compounded a miscarriage of justice.
“Holding Halabi for six years based largely on secret evidence has made a mockery of due process and the most basic fair trial provisions. He should long ago have been released. To continue to cruelly detain him is profoundly unjust.”
During his prolonged period of detention, Israeli courts granted prosecutors’ requests to extend his remand 27 times before his conviction on Wednesday. More than 160 hearings have been held, many behind closed doors.
World Vision has an annual budget of almost €3 billion, operates in 100 countries and employs tens of thousands of people.
The allegations prompted major donors, including some western governments, to freeze funding, prompting the organisation to close its Gaza office.
The charity, which focuses on helping children, said an independent audit found no evidence of wrongdoing or of funds missing. It said that in the 10-year period Mr Halabi was employed, it budgeted about $22.5 million for operations in Gaza, making the amount Mr Halabi allegedly diverted “hard to reconcile”.
World Vision spokeswoman Sharon Marshall said the organisation acknowledged the verdict “with disappointment” and said it would support any appeal because it believed Mr Halabi was innocent. – Additional reporting: Reuters