Former First Minister Humza Yousaf faces a probe regarding a Scottish government donation that he requested go to the U.N. aid agency UNRWA while his in-laws were trapped in the Gaza Strip.
The day after Yousaf made the announcement, his in-laws were allowed to leave via the Rafah Crossing to Egypt, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
Yousaf announced that the Scottish government would provide £250,000 (about $325,000) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency on Nov. 2, adding to an earlier government contribution of £500,000 ($650,000) announced on Oct. 14.
Also on Nov. 2, Yousaf met with UNRWA representatives.
The next day, Nov. 3, the parents of Yousaf’s wife, Nadia—Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla—left Gaza. They were visiting relatives (El-Nakla’s mother had a stroke in March) and became trapped there as war broke out with the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Paying to get through the Gaza-Egypt border is not an uncommon practice. A network of smugglers operating around the Rafah Crossing has existed for years. Media in January reported Gazans paying up to $10,000 to “brokers” with ties to Egyptian intelligence to escape the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Although there is no evidence that Yousaf’s UNRWA donation and his in-laws’ escape from the war zone are directly connected, the timeline of events gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. His in-laws had tried three times unsuccessfully to leave and then suddenly a day after the donation they were escorted out.
“This raises significant questions about what his motivations [were] for using taxpayers’ money in the area,” member of Scottish Parliament Stephen Kerr of the Conservative Party said when the Telegraph first reported on the donation in early March.
Yousaf, born in Glasgow to Pakistani immigrants, accused the Telegraph of targeting him for being a Muslim, posting to X on March 9:
“I don’t usually respond to smears against me or my family, but this story is so outrageous it requires a response. Most of my political life, I’ve battled insinuations from sections of the media desperate to link me to terrorism despite campaigning my whole life against it.
“The latest smear from the Telegraph is just a continuation of these Islamaphobic [sic] attacks,” he said.
A spokesman for the first minister said at the time: “UNRWA had no role in the situation regarding the first minister’s extended family, and any suggestion of a conflict of interest in this matter would be completely untrue.”
However, Kerr said Yousaf had “some serious explaining to do” and “may very well have broken the [Scottish Ministerial] Code.”
According to the Telegraph, the Scottish Ministerial Code of conduct states that ministers “must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise.”
Kerr noted that Yousaf’s decision to donate to UNRWA went against the advice of officials, who urged that the money go to another U.N. agency, UNICEF, with it specifically earmarked for clean water for Gazans.
The officials reversed themselves, however, after receiving an Oct. 30 email from Yousaf, in which he said, “If I am meeting UNRWA this week we should just announce an extra £250K to them, taking our total to £750K.”
It has since emerged that the donation came from the International Development Fund, a £10 million fund meant for Malawi, Pakistan, Rwanda and Zambia.
Credit for uncovering the details goes to Glasgow resident Craig Houston, whose YouTube channel, “Craig Houston Talks To,” covers politics, culture and sports. Calling it a “scandal,” he said he sensed something amiss when the source of the funds for UNRWA wasn’t publicized. He then filed a series of Freedom of Information Scotland Act (FOISA) requests.
It was due to one of Houston’s FOISA requests that the government admitted it is conducting a “review of the processes involved in our response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
Houston, in one of what he terms his “10-minute rants,” noted that the money to UNRWA was unrestricted. It wasn’t dedicated to clean water, the original purpose of the funds.
In a July 13 YouTube video, Houston said, “I think when your mum-in-law and father-in-law are in a country that’s a war zone that you’ve just gave [sic] two donations totaling 750,000 pounds to within a couple of weeks and one of them the day before they’re released from that country kind of suggests a perceived conflict of interest.”
The fact that Yousaf had family in Gaza through his wife raised concerns when he was first minister. (He resigned on May 7 after dissolving a power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens party.)
Faran Jeffery, director of general operations at the Midstone Centre for International Affairs, a national security think tank, told JNS in November that journalists hadn’t adequately analyzed Yousaf’s Gaza family connections.
“If you were living in Gaza under Hamas rule, there’s simply no way you could have avoided contact with Hamas,” Jeffery said. “So the question nobody seems to be asking is what kind of influence Hamas may have had on Yousaf through El-Nakla and her family in Gaza?”
As first minister, Yousaf staked out an extreme anti-Israel position. In a Jan. 5 press release, he urged the United Kingdom to pressure Israel to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, despite Israel’s repeated warnings that a ceasefire would enable Hamas to stay in power.
“The time has come for the U.K. Government to speak out forcefully and make it clear that Israeli action has gone way beyond a legitimate response to the appalling Hamas attack of 7 October,” Yousaf said in the statement.
He called on the British government to make it clear to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other Israeli ministers and IDF commanders that they would “be held accountable” if they continue their “indiscriminate killing.”
In November 2023, Yousaf drew criticism for supporting anti-Israel marches on Armistice Day. The idea of violating the solemnity of the day, which marks the end of World War I, drew criticism from some quarters.
Also, despite his claims of “campaigning my whole life” against terrorism, as a young Scottish parliamentary assistant, Yousaf arranged a high-level meeting in 2008 with Hamas leader Mohammad Sawalha.
However, Yousaf redirected the money to UNRWA before revelations emerged that employees of the U.N. relief agency had taken part in the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. In January, UNRWA fired 12 of its workers after reviewing information supplied by Israel.
Further Israeli revelations showed the depth of UNRWA’s collusion with Hamas, including the discovery of a Hamas computer server farm underneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City and Hamas tunnels underneath UNRWA schools.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has since revealed that the aid agency is currently employing hundreds of terrorists.
On July 10, Israel’s Foreign Ministry attached a list of names and ID numbers of 108 UNRWA terrorist-employees to a letter to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
The letter said it was a “small fraction” of a much larger list including hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members also working for UNRWA. The wider list could not be released due to security considerations.
“Israel sees no role whatsoever for UNRWA in Gaza after this war ends,” Prime Minister’s Office spokesman David Mencer said on July 12.