Italian police have arrested nine people accused of raising around \u20ac7m (\u00a36m) for Hamas over more than two years.<\/p>\n
The money was ostensibly collected as humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians, a police statement said, but was instead sent to the militant group via a “complex fundraising system”.<\/p>\n
Alongside the arrests, police say they have seized more than \u20ac8m (\u00a37m) in assets as part of the investigation. <\/p>\n
Police say the suspects are “specifically accused of carrying out financing operations believed to have contributed to terrorist activities”.<\/p>\n
The arrests were made as part of a joint initiative between Italy’s counter-terror police and financial police.<\/p>\n
The investigation began after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack in southern Israel. <\/p>\n
Police say they analysed “a series of reports of suspicious financial transactions” involving some of the suspects in the lead up to the attack.<\/p>\n
Investigators uncovered a “complex” system of fundraising, which was headquartered in Genoa with branches in Milan, the statement adds.<\/p>\n
“The suspects collected donations intended for the civilian population of Gaza, however, it emerged that over 71% of these funds were diverted to Hamas’s coffers to finance its military wing and support the families of suicide bombers or those detained for terrorism,” the police statement says.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the most well-known of the arrested suspects was Mohammad Hannoun, the president of the Palestinian Association in Italy.<\/p>\n
Mr Hannoun has previously described allegations he is a financier of Hamas as a “lie”. <\/p>\n
Piantedosi thanked police for their work in a post on X, but also noted that “the presumption of innocence… must always be recognised at this stage”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian police have arrested nine people accused of raising around \u20ac7m (\u00a36m) for Hamas over more than two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-371689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}