Hamas foreign policy 'ringleader' lives in Jewish neighborhood in London

Mohamed Qassem Sawalha, 62, considered for years to be responsible for Hamas' foreign policy, has been living in London since the 1990s, obtained British nationality and even bought public housing in Barnet, one of the districts with the largest Jewish population. as revealed by The Sunday Times.

The British Sunday newspaper recounts how Qassem Sawalha was in charge of at least two visits by the Hamas delegation to Moscow, the first in 2017 together with the organization's number two.. Mousa Mohamed Abu Mazook, and the second in 2019, in which he met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

The British Government considers Hamas “a terrorist organization” since 2021, including its military and political branches. Since that year, Qassem Sawalha apparently leads a double life between Istanbul and London, where he continues to live with his wife Sawsan and where he has even become director of the Finsbury Park mosque, where the radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza once preached. , convicted of terrorism.

The case has exposed the security services and the Department of the Interior in the midst of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, given the possibility that members of the organization are living freely on British soil.. Qassem Sawalha's lawyers have responded to the news in The Sunday Times by stating that he is “a law-abiding British citizen” and that many of the allegations against him are “false.”

According to the London newspaper, Mohamed Qassem Sawalha bought public housing for 366,000 euros in 2021 in the district of Barnet, benefiting from a discount of 140,000 euros thanks to the Right to Buy program, after having lived in rent since 2003. Barnet district leader Barry Rawlings said he has contacted the police and ordered a thorough review of his case.

Although he has never created problems in the neighborhood in this time, the group UK Lawyers for Israel had already contacted the district in 2020, warning of Sawalha's alleged links to Hamas.. The claim was raised to Scotland Yard, which considered that there was no evidence to take action.

The Hamas militant, born in the West Bank, would have managed to elude the Israeli security services, which considered him a fugitive, and obtain British citizenship within months of his arrival.

In 2004, the US Department of Justice warned that Sawalha continued to work for Hamas and that he held secret talks to “revitalize terrorist actions in Israel and assist in money laundering to support the organization in Gaza and the West Bank.”. In 2001, the British Government had already declared the military branch of Hamas, but not the political branch, a “terrorist organization.”

In 2009, Sawalha signed a declaration thanking Allah “for having defeated Zionism”, demanding the sending of weapons to Gaza and calling for the opening of “a third jihadist front”, alongside the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.. That same year, the Israeli Defense Ministry ratified his ties to Hamas and warned that he would be arrested if he dared to return.

Mohamed Qassem Sawalha was linked in 2009 to the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), which organized a chain of pro-Palestinian demonstrations under the banner: “Stop the Holocaust.”. That same year he signed the Istanbul declaration with 60 clerics, calling for “jihad and resistance to the occupation.”

Ten years later, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs considered Sawalha “the representative of Hamas in the United Kingdom”, after having been between 2013 and 2017 “at the head of the group's international relations.”