Qatari royal family member authorized arms supply to Hezbollah - dossier
A dossier provided by security contractor, Jason G., documented the role played since 2017 by a Qatari royal family member in a sprawling terror finance scheme.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JONATHAN SPYERLebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, escorted by his bodyguards, greets his supporters at an anti-US protest in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon September 17, 2012(photo credit: REUTERS/SHARIF KARIM/FILE PHOTO)Qatar’s monarchy has financed weapons deliveries to Hezbollah, a private-security contractor told The Jerusalem Post this week.Jason G., who claims to have worked for Western intelligence agencies as well as being a consultant to the Gulf state, said he penetrated Qatar’s weapons-procurement business as part of an apparent sting operation.A “member of the royal family” authorized the delivery of military hardware to the US- and EU-designated terrorist entity Hezbollah in Lebanon, he told the Post.A dossier provided by Jason G. documented the alleged role played since 2017 by a Qatari royal family member in a sprawling scheme to finance terrorism.The Lebanese Hezbollah organization is an Iranian proxy Shi’ite militia, established by Tehran’s Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Lebanon in 1982. It remains dependent on Iranian finance and support.Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Sulaiman al-Khulaifi, Qatar’s ambassador to Belgium and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), allegedly sought to pay Jason G. €750,000 to hush up the role of Qatar’s regime in supplying money and weapons to Hezbollah.At a January 2019 meeting with Khulaifi in Brussels, the envoy said, “The Jews are our enemies,” Jason G. said.Jason G., who uses an alias to shield himself from Qatari retaliation, said his goal was for “Qatar to stop funding extremists.” The “bad apples need to be taken out of the barrel and for them [Qatar] to be part of the international community,” he added.Former Knesset member Azmi Bishara, an Arab-Israeli who was accused of aiding Hezbollah in its war against Israel in 2006, found refuge and royal patronage (and immunity from prosecution) in Doha.In the wake of the new revelations, prominent European politicians this week urged a swift crackdown on Qatar’s alleged support for financing terrorism and Hezbollah.
Nathalie Goulet, a French senator who led a commission that investigated jihadist networks in Europe and authored a report for NATO on terrorism finance, told FoxNews.com: “We must have a European policy regarding Qatar and especially be careful with its financing of terrorism. Belgium must ask the EU for an investigation and freeze all Qatari bank accounts in the meantime.”“We have to settle a general policy with a special warning and a prudent policy to prevent any financing of terrorism, especially from countries like Qatar or Turkey” that support the Muslim Brotherhood and its dangerous antisemitic ideology, she said.Ian Paisley Jr., a member of the British Parliament who tracks terrorism finance, said the Qatari regime’s conduct “is outrageous, and the government, both in the UK and Belgium, should act decisively. These allegations are very serious, particularly given that the ambassador is ambassador to NATO, and this should be investigated and appropriate action taken.”“Hezbollah are a proscribed terrorist group in Britain, and working with them can’t be tolerated,” he said. “I will... contact the UK foreign secretary and ask him to investigate these allegations and make representations to the ambassador.”Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a US human-rights organization, said Qatar’s alleged role in financing Hezbollah terrorists “requires prompt action against those involved and immediate expulsion of the Qatari ambassador.”According to Jason G., two Qatari charities furnished cash to Hezbollah in Beirut “under the guise of food and medicine.” He named the organizations involved as the Sheikh Eid Bin Mohammad Al Thani Charitable Association and the Education Above All Foundation.Jason G. said his dossier was viewed by top German intelligence officials, and it could fetch as much as €10 million, German weekly Die Zeit reported last month. This has not been verified by the Post.Qatar’s financial and charity systems have been embroiled in other alleged terrorism finance schemes. A lawsuit filed in New York City asserted that Qatari institutions, including Qatar Charity (formerly known as the Qatar Charitable Society) and Qatar National Bank, funded Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Washington Free Beacon reported in June.The plaintiffs in the case included the family of Taylor Force, an American military veteran killed by the Palestinian Sunni terrorist organization Hamas in 2016.“Qatar co-opted several institutions that it dominates and controls to funnel coveted US dollars [the chosen currency of Middle East terrorist networks] to Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] under the false guise of charitable donations,” the lawsuit reads.In 2014, German Development Minister Gerd Müller accused Qatar of financing Islamic State terrorists.“This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history... The ISIS troops, the weapons – these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq,” he told German public broadcaster ZDF.“You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops,” Müller said. “The keyword there is Qatar – and how do we deal with these people and states politically.”The energy-rich Qatari monarchy is a “Club Med for terrorists,” Ron Prosor, at the time Israeli ambassador to the UN, wrote in The New York Times opinion section in 2014.
