Former Hamas chief ‘behind pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests’
By Ewan Somerville and Daniel Martin, Telegraph:
Muhammad Kathem Sawalha is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, one of six groups organising the London march on Nov 11.
A former Hamas chief is behind one of the groups organising the pro-Palestine Armistice Day protests, The Telegraph can disclose.
Muhammad Kathem Sawalha led the proscribed terrorist group in the West Bank in the late 1980s and is alleged to have “masterminded” its military strategy with involvement as recently as 2019, before moving to Britain where he lives in a London council house.
He is a founder of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of six groups behind the under-fire march in London on November 11, and Israeli authorities claim his son, Obada Sawalha, is now its vice-president.
The revelation comes as The Telegraph has discovered that half of the groups organising the march – who are still defying calls from the Metropolitan Police to call it off – have links to Hamas.
It has fuelled further pressure for it to be cancelled, with the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-Semitism saying that it “proves that these marches are not about peace” and the Campaign for Anti-Semitism describing this newspaper’s findings as “extremely serious”.
Sawalha, 62, worked as a director for MAB between 1999 and 2007 and helped found it, after being granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. BBC’s Panorama claimed in 2006 that he was “said to have masterminded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy”.
He now lives in a council house in Barnet, north London, but in 2004 he was named as a co-conspirator in a US indictment for having allegedly helped bankroll Hamas and he reportedly took part in an official Hamas delegation to Moscow in 2019 and served on the Hamas politburo between 2013 and 2017.
Another of the Muslim Association of Britain’s three directors, Dr Anas Altikriti, co-founded a group called the British Muslim Initiative with a senior commander in Hamas, Mohammed Sawalha, and Azzam Tamimi who has been described as a Hamas “special envoy” in Britain.
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