by Giovanni Giacalone
On October 7th, 2024, exactly one year after the massacre perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis in the south of the country, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated three individuals and one sham charity that are prominent international financial supporters of Hamas, as well as one Hamas-controlled financial institution in Gaza. OFAC also designated a longstanding Hamas supporter and nine of his businesses. These actors play critical roles in external fundraising for Hamas, often under the guise of charitable work, that finance the group’s terrorist activities. Today’s action, which is being taken pursuant to the counterterrorism authority Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as amended, highlights the abuse of the non-profit organization (NPO) sector by terrorist financiers through the use of sham charities to generate revenue.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet L. Yellen, said: “
“As we mark one year since Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, Treasury will continue relentlessly degrading the ability of Hamas and other destabilizing Iranian proxies to finance their operations and carry out additional violent acts“.
And again:
“The Treasury Department will use all available tools at our disposal to hold Hamas and its enablers accountable, including those who seek to exploit the situation to secure additional sources of revenue.”
The DOT stated that Hamas has exploited the suffering in Gaza to solicit funds through sham and front charities that falsely claim to help civilians in Gaza. Hamas affiliates raise funds through sham or front charities and also seek to garner public support for the group. As of early 2024, Hamas may have received as much as $10 million a month through such donations. Hamas considers Europe to be a key source of fundraising and has maintained representation across the continent for many years in part to raise funds through sham charities.
The sanctioned individuals are Hamid Abdullah Hussein al Ahmar, a Yemeni national living in Turkey, indicated as one of the most prominent international supporters of Hamas and a key member of Hamas’s once-secret investment portfolio, which at its peak managed over $500 million worth of assets enabling Hamas’s leaders to live in luxury outside the Palestinian territories despite the real humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza. Since at least 2013, Al Ahmar has also been the chairman of the Lebanon-based Hamas sham charity Al-Quds International Foundation, which OFAC designated in October 2012 for being controlled by Hamas.
Majed al-Zeer, senior Hamas representative in Germany, who is also one of the senior Hamas members in Europe and has played a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising.
Adel Doughman (Doughman), who is in charge of Hamas activity in Austria and is another one of the most prominent Hamas representatives in Europe. Doughman has been closely associated with senior Hamas leaders and has held senior positions in institutions affiliated with Hamas, which transfer money to the organization.
Mohammad Hannoun, an Italy-based Hamas member who established the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, or Associazione Benefica di Solidarietà con il Popolo Palestinese (ABSPP), a sham charity in Italy which ostensibly raises funds for humanitarian purposes, but in reality helps bankroll Hamas’s military wing. As an executive at ABSPP, Hannoun has sent money to Hamas-controlled organizations since at least 2018. He has solicited funding for Hamas with senior Hamas officials and sent at least $4 million to Hamas over a 10-year period.
Hannoun and ABSPP are being designated for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, Hamas. Al-Zeer and Doughman are being designated for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Hamas.
A Palestinian architect based in Genoa, Hannoun is the founder of the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (ABSPP), the president of the Association of Palestinians in Italy and the association Europeans for al-Quds.
In December of 2021, after several reports to the Anti-Money Laundering Office, Unicredit bank suspended operations on the accounts of the ABSPP, which also has offices in Milan and Rome, due to a series of anomalies. From failure to register in the Revenue Agency register to the massive movement of cash, in some cases to subjects registered in the blacklists of European databases. However, according to the Italian media, the indictment that was launched by the judicial office did not lead anywhere due to the lack of verifiable elements in the Palestinian territories.
This issue reached the Italian Parliament with an interrogation by Andrea Del Mastro Delle Vedove of the Brothers of Italy party (Fratelli d’Italia), but Hannoun continued with his activities and maintained relations with several Italian left-wing hardliners such as Manlio Di Stefano, Alessandro Di Battista, and Laura Boldrini.
As if it wasn’t enough, in August 2022, an investigative report published by OFCS Report, an Italian observatory with expertise in national and international security, exposed a series of political connections regarding Hannoun, on a national and international level, including photos of him next to Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal.
In July 0f 2023, the Israeli Ministry of Defense asked the Italian police to seize Hannoun’s money. From the investigation conducted by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, it emerged that 500 thousand euros were available to the architect who in the past was accused by Israel, without any criminal repercussions, of hiding financial support to Palestinian suicide bombers.
These funds, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, are “the property of, or in any case a reward for, a terrorist organization.” Therefore, “they must be seized”. As explained by the Italian news site “Il Sussidiario”, over the years, and on several occasions, the Italian intelligence services received reports of strange movements of Mohammad Hannoun’s associations, in particular of money.
In March of 2024, Hannoun tried to bypass the closure of his accounts first by asking donors to bring cash money directly to his offices, and then through the help of Modestino Preziosi, a former marathon runner with connections to the private security sector in France and to a Baidoa-based university which hired Italian security personnel, including a former Italian air force officer who died in a car accident in 2023. The Washington Outsider tried to contact the South West State University, but did not receive any reply. Somalis in Baidoa who were asked about this activity, were unable to provide any information.
The Washington Outsider first raised the issue of Mohammad Hannoun on October 11th, 2023, one day after the individual, while being interviewed by the Italian national TV station Rai3, claimed that “Hamas’ attack is self-defense”; without any hesitation or concern that such a statement would go public.
A few days later, on October 13th, Hannoun took advantage of his role as imam at the Islamic Center of Genoa to attack those countries supporting Israel:
“We have seen the attitude of our Italian, European, American governments and some Arab countries who have sided in favor of Israel, who begin to cry for the victims, who even told the lie to encourage, to compare Hamas as equal to ISIS ”… All this, to attack the “Palestinian resistance”.
The video was posted on both, the Facebook page of the Islamic Center of Genoa and Hannoun’s Facebook account, but it later disappeared.
During a recent pro-Palestinian event in Rome, Hannoun also defined Hamas as “Palestinian partisans” and accused some Italian politicians of being Mossad agents.
Hannoun’s rhetoric did not go unnoticed and several Italian newspapers from both, left-wing and right-wing political areas such as La Repubblica, Il Foglio, La Verità, Linkiesta and Libero published articles exposing the issue.
On January 2nd, 2024, Hannoun posted the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood (God is our goal, The Messenger is our role model, The Qur’an is our constitution, Jihad is our path, Death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration) followed by the words: “It is not a slogan to raise or words to consume, but rather convictions. For its sake we live and for its sake we meet God”, and by the verses 23 and 24 of the Surah 33 (The Coalition).
On January 4th, Hannoun used his personal Facebook account to glorify Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’ notorious bombmaker, sadly known for both developing Hamas’s use of suicide bombings and building many of the explosives used in attacks:
“On this day, the cowardly assassination took place; Mercy to the martyrs; The legendary engineer martyr, who was a turning point in the history of the Palestinian resistance; Yahya Ayyash Abu Al-Baraa. Palestine today is in dire need of your patriotic spirit and vengeance for the spirit of the martyr Sheikh Saleh Abu Muhammad. Martyrs do not die.”
The second-last line of Hannoun’s post is dedicated to Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader in Lebanon who died in a drone strike on January 2nd, 2024. The post was written in Arabic.
On The Times of Israel, Giuseppe Levi Pezzulli, a solicitor specialized in International financial law and a foreign policy scholar, explained how Italy so- far turned a blind eye on Hannoun:
“For over a decade, Hannoun has been identified as a key figure in Hamas’s financial apparatus. His ability to continue operating in Italy without significant legal or regulatory pushback points to systemic failures. Italian authorities have long known of his connections to Hamas—dating back to at least 2013—but have failed to act decisively”.
Levi Pezzulli also added:
“In the wake of these sanctions, Italy faces a critical decision: continue with its current lax approach, or take concrete steps to dismantle the financial networks supporting Hamas… Failure to do so will only exacerbate the perception that Italy is a soft target for those seeking to exploit its financial systems for extremist ends”.
Since October 7th, Italy has seen a revival of Islamist preachers glorifying Hamas, spreading antisemitic and anti-American content using the pulpits of Islamic centers, social networks and street demonstrations. In August, a so-called “New Communist Party”, side to side with other far-left and Palestinian groups, blacklisted Jews and non-Jews indicated as “Zionist” agents and paraded some of their photos on cardboard signs during a street march in Milan. One of the far-left pro-Pal agitators even threatened journalists and called for the marking of “Zionist homes”. On October 7th, 2024, in Turin, demonstrators burned Israeli flags.
In the evening of October 8th, prosecutor Nicola Piacente stated that the Genoa Public Prosecutor’s Office could open a new investigation into Mohammad Hannoun if useful documentation for further investigative investigations were to arrive from the United States.