Reuters is reporting that the US Treasury Department has designated as terrorists Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri, three other Hamas officials, and a Saudi Arabia-based company controlled by one of the group. According to the report:
September 10, 2015 The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned four Hamas officials and financiers and a Saudi Arabia-based company controlled by one of them for providing financial support to the Palestinian militant group.
Among those named by the Treasury Department were Salih al-Aruri, a Hamas political bureau member who it said was responsible for Hamas money transfers, and Mahir Salah, a Hamas financier based in Saudi Arabia and dual British and Jordanian citizen who Treasury said leads the Hamas Finance Committee in Saudi Arabia.
Also named were Abu Ubaydah Khayri Hafiz al-Agha, a Saudi Arabian citizen, and Mohammed Reda Mohammed Anwar Awad, an Egyptian national.
The Treasury Department also sanctioned Asyaf International Holding Group for Trading and Investment, a Saudi Arabia-based company that it said is managed by al-Agha and used to finance Hamas.”
The GMBDW reported in August that Turkey had expelled Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri from the country. Our other reporting on al-Arouri has included:
- In July, we reported that Israeli security officials announced that they had broken up a Hamas cell in the West Bank that was in the planning stateless of a major terror attack and that was run by Saleh al-Arouri, the Turkey-based head of Hamas operations in the West Bank.
- In November 2014, the GMBDW reported that that Israel had arrested dozens of members of a Hamas terror network said to be funded and directed by Hamas officials in Turkey.
- In August 2014, the GMBDW was the first to report that that Salah al-Arouri, a Hamas military leader residing in Turkey, had admitted that the Hamas military wing was responsible for the kidnapping, an event which sparked the recent round of the Gaza conflict. Subsequent Israeli media reports say that Salah al-Aruri (aka Saleh al-Arouri), who is based in Turkey, was also the mastermind behind what has been described as a Hamas coup attempt in the West Bank that was intended to end the rule of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and spark a third intifada. False claims that the Israeli police had exculpated Hamas in connection with the crime were for a time a staple on websites linked to a or sympathetic to Hamas and/or the Muslim Brotherhood.
- We also reported in August 2014 that Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal had further confirmed that Hamas members were behind the West Bank killing of three Israeli teenagers.
The Hamas charter says that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine” and soon after Hamas took over the Gaza strip.
For more on Hamas, go here.
For the original US Treasury report n the designations, go here.
