The U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday that American and French law enforcement carried out a coordinated operation to dismantle what it said is a Hamas finance network that raised funds in both countries under the guise of humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The department previously unsealed indictments against Omar Adhami and Abdel Adhami, Louisiana-based brothers charged with providing material support to a foreign terror group and wire fraud as part of the broader conspiracy. On Friday, it unsealed indictments against the man it says was at the “center” of the network, Saleem Alzaq, a resident of Gaza, and Raed Yusuf, of Florida.
It also announced that France’s General Directorate for Internal Security arrested three of Alzaq’s alleged associates, Faouzi Barika, Amel Oualid and Nordine Barika.
“The arrests announced today disrupted a global financing network that was supplying Hamas with the funds needed to continue its campaign of destroying innocent lives,” stated John Eisenberg, assistant U.S. attorney general for national security.
“These coordinated investigations and arrests spanned multiple jurisdictions in the United States and across international borders and demonstrate that we will use all of our capabilities to eradicate terrorism,” he stated.
According to the indictment, Alzaq, 45, is a battalion deputy commander in Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and serves as a photographer in the terror group’s propaganda arm.
“Alzaq, in his role as a Hamas media officer, has photographed Hamas events, including events with Hamas senior leaders such as Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar and distributed those photographs with descriptions of the events to other individuals involved in the Hamas media apparatus,” the indictment alleges.
The department said that since at least 2020, he has used platforms like Telegram, Snapchat and PayPal to form an international Hamas funding network that raised about $1.75 million for the terrorist group, including $626,000 from the United States.
Alzaq frequently concealed the purpose of the donations he solicited as aid to Gazans when he was actually directing the money to Hamas, according to the indictment.
He allegedly told a co-conspirator on Oct. 9, 2023, that “while he was using his Telegram channel to show the killing and attacks ‘against the Jews and the Zionists,’” which Hamas carried out two days before, “he was limiting the use of his Snapchat accounts to showcase the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, so that his Snapchat accounts were not shut down for their content.”
He instructed his followers to avoid writing “free Palestine” and “long live Hamas” on donations to avoid his accounts being closed.
The indictment also alleges that he told an undercover U.S. law enforcement officer that he “had ways to receive money in New York” and had “friends” in the state, per the indictment.
In France, Alzaq allegedly partnered with Faouzi Barika and Oualid to form two sham charities, Association Baraka and Ensemble C Mieux.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the three men and the two terrorism fronts on Friday.
“Terrorist organizations like Hamas rely on sophisticated financial facilitators and fraudulent schemes designed to exploit the public to sustain their operations,” stated Scott Bessent, U.S. treasury secretary.
Yousef and the Adhami brothers are in U.S. custody and have been charged with a variety of terrorism and money-laundering offenses that carry potentially decades-long prison sentences.
It is not clear what charges the three men in French custody face.
Alzaq faces up to 65 years in prison for the counts with which he has been charged in the United States but remains at large.
