Mohammad El Halabi

Mohammad El Halabi (born 1978) is a Palestinian aid worker and former manager for World Vision International in Palestine who was convicted of diverting funds to Hamas.

In June of 2022, he was found guilty of membership of a terrorist organization, financing terrorist activities, transmitting information to an enemy entity, and criminal possession of a weapon. Significant controversy has been raised over the nature and validity of his convictions due to, in part, the use of secret evidence in the ruling.

Independent auditors and the Australian government have found "no evidence of wrongdoing or diversion of funds" form World Vision, which has stated that it would appeal.

Personal life and family
Halabi was born in 1978 in the Jabalia refugee camp which his family had fled to from their village 15 miles to the north during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. Halabi’s father Khalil worked closely with UNRWA's director for Gaza, attending meetings with the likes of Tony Blair and John Kerry.

Halabi studied engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza, the foremost engineering university in Gaza, where he was a member of the Fatah club. The wider Halabi family had a history of opposition to Hamas, and Halabi's younger brother, Hamed, once turned up to an interview with The Guardian with a head injury that he said was from participating in one of the rare demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas rule.

In 2003, Halabi married his wife Ola, with whom he has five children. In 2004, in response to the declining conditions in Gaza, Halabi swapped his engineering career for aid work.

Detention and trial
Halabi was arrested on June 15 of 2016 at the Erez Crossing under suspicion by Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency that Halabi had siphoned off $48 million in funds from the budget of World Vision, of which he was a program manager, to Hamas over the course of six years.

After his arrest, Halabi's lawyer, Muhammad Mahmoud, stated that his client has nothing to do with Hamas and that the fact that the investigation had lasted 55 days proved that there were problems with the evidence. On 4 August, three weeks after the raid, Halabi confessed to an undercover informer that he had been diverting funds to Hamas, but his lawyer has claimed that he may have made the statement under duress in the form of beating by interrogators, treatment which the UN has said “may amount to torture”.

World Vision denied the allegations of financial irregularity, stating that all of its operations were properly overseen and audited. Speaking in 2016, Tim Costello, chief executive of World Vision Australia, decried the charges, citing a mismatch between Shin Bet's claims and the NGO's total budget in the area, noting that: "What we know is our total operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5 million, and yet the figures being circulated are up to $50 million has been diverted from him." The NGO further claimed that before 2014, El Halabi's managerial level would have capped his signing authority at $15,000 according to the organization's accountability processes.

Verdict
On 15 June, 2022, Halabi was found guilty of "membership of a terrorist organisation, financing terrorist activities, having "transmitted information to the enemy" and "possession of a weapon". World Vision said there would be an appeal. Independent auditors and the Australian government found "no evidence of wrongdoing or diversion of funds."

The court's decision "did not describe the diversion of any financial aid to Hamas", but rejected World Vision's assertion of strong controls over its own finances. The court also considered "secret evidence" including an alleged confession based on the testimony of another prisoner that was obtained under duress, according to Halabi's lawyer.

In late August of 2022 he was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Controversy
As the trial dragged on, the Israeli government came under increasing international pressure to resolve the case and bring the aid worker's indeterminate detention to an end. Halabi has continued to insist that he is innocent, and refused multiple plea deal offers over the years. The defense noted in February 2022: "The facts are very clear and the case should have been dropped a long time ago … but the Israelis need to find a face-saving way out since Mohammed refused a plea deal."

Various critics have pointed to issues with the proceedings. In March 2017, the Australian government concluded a study that found no evidence any funds had been diverted. This was followed in July 2017 by an independent forensic audit commissioned by World Vision that similarly found no funds missing and no evidence of criminal activity. Since March 2021, Halabi's defense has claimed that in addition to the alleged confession being coerced, the original document recording the confession appears to have been lost.

According to Michael Omer-Man, director of research at Democracy for the Arab World Now, Halabi's charges include treason despite him being from Gaza and neither an Israeli citizen nor resident. Halabi's lawyers Maher Hanna and Jonathan Kuttab have noted that the trial is also partly reliant on 'secret evidence' that has been withheld from observers. Hanna and Kuttab described the persuasiveness of the material as "embarrassing".

In November 2020, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Michael Lynk and three colleagues stated: "What is happening to [Halabi] bears no relation to the trial standards we expect from democracies, and is part of a pattern where Israel uses secret evidence to indefinitely detain hundreds of Palestinians," while noting that it was "particularly disturbing that the prosecution is relying upon confessions allegedly obtained by force while he was denied access to a lawyer, and on testimony from undercover informers." The UN special rapporteurs demanded Mr. Halabi be given a fair trial or be released unconditionally.

By July 2021, the court proceedings against Halabi had been running for five years without conclusion or the materialization of a credible body of evidence, despite a cumulative 165 court sessions, a count that had risen to 167 by March 2022. A 90-day extension of the trial was approved on 22 February 2022.

Wafa, the official news agency run by the Palestinian National Authority, stated that the case was the longest trial in the history of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.

After the court's guilty verdict in 2022, the EU tweeted: "According to OHCHR, the verdict is deeply problematic as it is based on secret evidence, with the defendant having been detained for 6 years without a verdict. This is inconsistent with international fair trial standards. Without a fair and due process, justice for Halabi cannot be served."