A report provided by security contractor Jason G. documents the role played since 2017 by a member of the Qatari royal family in terror financing schemes: The Qatari regime had supplied Hezbollah with shipments of weapons, Jason G told the Jerusalem Post.
Jason, who claims that he worked with western intelligence agencies, says that he penetrated a Qatari company for buying weapons as part of an investigation that he did.
Jason told the Jerusalem Post that a member of the royal family allowed the delivery of military equipment to the Lebanese Hezbollah that is classified as a terrorist entity in the US and some EU-countries.
According to the report provided by Jason, this funding comes within the framework of a sprawling scheme to finance terrorist movements that Qatar had been involved with back in 2017.
The Jerusalem Post describes Hezbollah as an Iranian Shiite proxy militia, established in Lebanon by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 1982. Hezbollah is still dependent on Iranian funding and support.
Jason added that Abdul Rahman bin Muhammad Suleiman Al-Khulaifi, Qatar’s ambassador to Belgium and the representative to NATO tried to bribe Jason with an amount of 750,000 euros, to keep him silent about the role of the Qatari regime in supplying Hezbollah with money and weapons and to hide the information he gained about these funds.
Jason quoted the Qatari ambassador as saying at a meeting held in January 2019 in Brussels: “The Jews are our enemies.”
Jason, who used a nickname to protect himself from Qatar, said that his goal is stopping the Qatari funding for extremists. “In order to make Qatar a part of the international society, the rotten apples should be removed from the barrel,” Jason added.
Against the backdrop of Jason’s information, EU politicians called for launching a campaign to stop the Qatari financing for Hezbollah and terrorism in general.
“We should have a European policy regarding Qatar, and we should be more cautious about Qatar’s financing of terrorism. Belgium should ask the European Union to conduct an investigation and freeze all Qatari bank accounts in the meantime,” Natalie Gault, a French senator who led a committee that investigated jihadist networks in Europe and prepared a report for NATO on terrorist financing, told FoxNews.
“We have to set a public policy with special and wise caution to prevent any funding for terrorism, especially from countries like Qatar or Turkey, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and its dangerous anti-Semitic ideology“, she said.
In the same context, Ian Paisley Jr., UK MP tracking terrorist financing, said that the behavior of the Qatari regime is “outrageous, and the government, in both the United Kingdom and Belgium, must act decisively. These allegations are very serious, given that the ambassador is a representative to NATO, and this should be investigated, and appropriate measures should be taken. Hezbollah is a terrorist group banned in Britain, and working with it cannot be tolerated,” he said.
Ephraim Zuroff, researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international human rights organization, said that Qatar’s role in financing Hezbollah terrorists requires immediate action against those involved, and the Qatari ambassador should be expelled immediately.
According to Jason, two Qatari charities provided Hezbollah in Beirut with money under the cover of providing food and medicine. Those charities are the „Sheikh Eid bin Muhammad Al Thani Charitable Society“ and „Education Above All Foundation“.
Jason said that his report was seen by senior German intelligence officials and that he might gain up to 10 million euros for that report, the German weekly Die Zeit reported last month. This could not been verified by the Jerusalem Post.
Qatar has been involved, through Qatar Charity, in other terrorist financing schemes. It is one of the foundations, operating under the cover of charitable work and it is one of a group of foundations, as confirmed by a lawsuit filed against these institutions in New York City. The lawsuit stated that Qatari institutions, including Qatar Charity (formerly known as the Qatar Charitable Society) and Qatar National Bank had funded Palestinian terrorist organizations, according to US media and reporting by MENA Study and Research Center.
The family of Taylor Force, a veteran American soldier killed by the Sunni Palestinian terrorist organization of Hamas in 2016, was among the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit states also that Qatar has chosen many of the institutions it controls to transfer US dollars [the preferred currency for terrorist networks in the Middle East] to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine under the false guise of charitable donations.
In 2014, German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar of financing Islamic State terrorists. “This kind of conflict, this kind of crises always has a history … ISIS forces, weapons – these are sons that were lost, some of them are from Iraq,” he told the German public broadcaster ZDF.
“You have to ask who is arming and financing ISIS. The main word is Qatar. And how can we deal with these people and countries,” Mueller added.
Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations at that time, wrote in the Opinion section of the New York Times in 2014 that the energy-rich Qatar monarchy is a club med for terrorists.
The reality is that the Qatari funds for Hezbollah, which has direct links to Iran, goes back to the historical relation between Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood, as it is said that they emerged from one source.
Here, we can review a collection of historical facts and events:
- Before the outbreak of the Iranian revolution, an MB delegation from many Arab countries met with Khomeini in Paris, after coordination with Abu al-Hassan Bani al-Sadr (the first president of Iran after the Iranian Revolution), and among them was Rashid Ghannouchi, one of the representatives of the Tunisian MB delegation.
- With the outbreak of the revolution in 1979 and overthrowing the Shah’s rule, the MB’s happiness was too great with the success of the first Islamic revolution in the region. The MB associations in the United States raised pictures of Khomeini, and a group’s delegation traveled to Tehran for congratulating Khomeini on this victory.
- Yusef al-Qaradawi, the ideologist of MB, considered in his book „Our Nation between Two Centuries“ the victory of the Iranian Revolution as one of the fruits of the Islamic awakening. “Khomeini established a state for Islam in Iran, and it had its revelation and impact on the Islamic awakening in the world, it revived the hopes of victory,” he writes.
- The MB viewed the rise of the Islamic Republic as a victory for their vision, and the first Islamic rule since the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate. The group has supported the Islamic revolution since its outbreak, because it was established against a secular regime, the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran, in turn, viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as a way to export the revolution.
- Upon the death of Khomeini in 1989, the MB’s Supreme Guide, Hamid Abu Al-Nasr, issued an obituary that included the following words: “The Muslim Brotherhood will count with God the deceased of Islam, Imam Khomeini, the leader who sparked the Islamic revolution against the tyrants.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, the former Iranian foreign minister and first advisor to the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed in a seminar on the Islamic awakening held in the Iranian city of Mashhad that “the Muslim Brotherhood is the closest to Tehran among all Islamic groups.”
Later, visits by members of the Guidance Bureau to Tehran became more frequent. In a televised interview after the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, the MB leader Kamal Helbawi was sitting next to Khamenei, praising him and the Iranian regime for their humility and respect for Sunnis and human rights.
In 2008, Mahdi Akef, a high representative of the MB, declared his support for rapprochement with Iran by saying: “I see that there is no reason to refuse that. We have 56 Sunni countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, so why we are afraid of Iran, which is the only Shiite country in the world. Isn’t Hassan Nasrallah a Shiite? Did not people support him in his war against Israel in the summer of 2006?”
At the end of the same year, Egyptian security revealed a cell affiliated with Hezbollah, aimed at destabilizing security in Egypt, in which MB leaders were involved, including the group’s leader at the time, Muhammad Mahdi Akef.
In this context, Khodr Nour Addin, a member of the Political Council of Hezbollah thanked Akef for his stance towards the Lebanese resistance in this case, considering this stance as “a testimony from an honest person, far from any personal interest.”
In 2013, Jadawel Publishing House published a book titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran … Khomeini-Khamenei”, written by the Syrian researcher Muhammad Sayed Rassas, in which he talks about the roots of the relation between the MB and the Islamic Republic of Iran, before and after the Islamic revolution. In this book, he mentions interesting information that belonged to the oral world of the Syrian opposition, according to the writer. It was reported that the Muslim Brotherhood’s delegation, which visited Iran after the victory of the 1979 revolution, proposed to announce Khomeini as the Caliph of all Muslims.
Despite Khomeini’s rejection of the delegation’s proposal, the MB continued its support for the new Iranian regime. They carried out major demonstrations against President Sadat for hosting the Shah of Iran in Egypt, and then supported Iran in its war against Iraq.
The Canadian „Crescent“ magazine on December 6, 1984 quoted the group’s general speaker, Omar al-Tlemceni: “I do not know any member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the world who attacks Iran.”
Finally, Rassas explains in his book that the relation between the group and Iran is not based on the political aspect alone, it is rather based on ideological foundations intertwined with politics, and this explains the resilience of their relations that are criticized all the time.
