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Friday, May 26, 2006

Hamas ends up with smuggled money anyway

Remember last week when Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was caught trying to smuggle over $800,000 into Gaza?

Well, the European monitors confiscated the money. Abbas demanded the money so he could launch a full investigation. And now...Hamas is using it to buy weapons for its terror gangs.

The EU is strangely silent about their complicity in this crime. Perhaps their job at the border crossing is to ensure that RPGs and Katyushas have been built by companies that adhere to the Zionist boycott.
Some 640,000 Euros confiscated from a Hamas smuggler at Rafiach crossing last week have been given to the Hamas Authority. Some of it will pay for a militia manned by Izaddin Al-Kassam terrorists.

The cash, the equivalent of some $820,000, was discovered in the baggage of the Hamas spokesman as he made his way into Gaza from Egypt. European Union inspectors confiscated the money, which was over 400 times more than the amount permitted without declaration. A band of Hamas gunmen arrived on the scene demanding the return of the money, but they were soon dispersed.

PA Chairman Abu Mazen ordered the money transferred to the prosecution offices of the PA, and demanded an investigation into the Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhari, and his activities.

However, Abu Zuhari said this week that the money had in fact been officially given to the PA's interior minister on May 22. Speaking with the official Hamas publication, Abu Zuhari promised that the donations would reach their "correct destinations."

Earlier this week, PA affairs correspondent Dalit HaLevy reports, Hamas Authority officials said that economic aid would be partially used to pay for the interior ministry's special security force. Members of the force were recruited from the Popular Resistance Committees and Izaddin Al-Kassam terrorist groups.