Charity group urges public trial as Gaza staffer set to face terror charges

The international charity World Vision has called for a “fair and transparent” trial for a Gaza employee arrested by Israel for allegedly funneling money to Hamas.

Israel accuses Mohammed Halabi, a manager of the aid group’s Gaza office, of diverting millions of dollars from World Vision’s budget to the Islamic terror group Hamas, helping it build underground tunnels, military bases and purchasing arms. His trial is expected to begin soon.

The comments on Monday by Kevin Jenkins, World Vision’s international CEO, came as Amnesty International also called for a fair trial amid reports that Halabi’s proceedings will be closed.

Trials for cases that Israel considers highly sensitive are sometimes held in secret.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said “it’s clear that the trial will be fair.”

A first court hearing for Halabi is set for Tuesday and is expected to be held in secret. Halabi’s legal team has appealed.

“A trial is legitimate if it is transparent,” World Vision International’s president Kevin Jenkins told AFP in an interview.

“So we will have to see how that unfolds. We have got bits of information like everybody else.

“Obviously with such serious allegations against a staff member, we are calling for him to have a fair hearing.”

He said the allegations against Halabi were so serious that the NGO was hoping for an open trial to learn as many lessons as possible if they were proved correct.

“As much as our donors want the truth to come out, we want the truth to come out,” he said. “Our whole reputation is based on integrity.”

Jenkins said allegations that Halabi diverted $7.2 million each year since 2010 to Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, and its military wing were “very difficult to reconcile” with reality.

The NGO has said its Gaza budget for the past 10 years was only $22.5 million, making the allegations all but impossible.

Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and Hamas is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Charities working in Gaza have some of the tightest controls on funds in the world, partly due to tough counter-terrorism legislation.

The impoverished Palestinian enclave has one of the world’s highest unemployment rates and relies heavily on foreign aid.

“We are not a naive organization. We have world-class systems to prevent the sort of things that are being alleged here,” Jenkins said.

“They are not foolproof, (but) they would generally have all sorts of red lights going off if anything close to what is being alleged should happen.

“It is very difficult to reconcile those numbers against the controls we have in place.”

Jenkins defended the NGO’s work in Gaza over the years, saying it had performed “with integrity.” Last year, it provided support for more than 40,000 children in the territory, he said.

The NGO has currently suspended its projects in the Palestinian territories pending an internal review, but Jenkins said there was a “strong desire to return to Gaza.”

“We can only work in places where we can perform our work with integrity. We feel like we have done that in the past. I feel like we will be able to do it going forward.”