Hamas chief’s ex-guard got asylum in UK, then hatched terror plot against Jews – report
Former bodyguard for Ismail Haniyeh was not on British security services' radar despite his links to the terror group's leadership being public knowledge, UK Times says
A former bodyguard for Hamas’s slain leader Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly granted asylum and citizenship in Britain before he was caught last year hatching a terrorist plot against Jews and Israeli-linked figures in Europe.
The London Times, which revealed Sunday that the former bodyguard had been given asylum in the UK, said he joined Haniyeh’s detail soon after Hamas won the Palestinian Authority’s 2006 legislative election, briefly making Haniyeh PA prime minister.
The former bodyguard left Gaza for the last time in 2012 and some time later moved to Britain, where he was one of several Hamas members who were granted asylum last decade based on claims of persecution by Egypt, the report said.
At the time, the newspaper noted, Britain considered Hamas’s armed wing a terrorist organization, while Hamas’s political wing, which Haniyeh led, was not proscribed in the UK until 2021.
The former bodyguard was eventually granted UK citizenship, and was living as an IT consultant in the suburbs of a large English city, even while his ties to Hamas were public knowledge, according to the report.
He was reportedly not a priority for British security services when he began planning to attack Jewish and Israeli targets with other Hamas terrorists in Europe.
The outlet gave his name only as “Mr. X,” citing a British judicial order to keep his identity secret to avoid prejudicing a separate criminal proceeding against him.
However, details provided by The Times about Mr. X — including that he is in his 40s, that his father is a top Hamas member, that he was arrested in Egypt over a decade ago, that he was arrested in London in November over last year’s plot, that he pre-recorded a video announcing the plot and that he faces extradition to Germany for allegedly moving weapons to a Vienna arms cache as part of the plot — confirm that Mr. X is the man named in German court filings as Mohammed A., whom German newspaper Die Welt has identified as the son of Hamas politburo member Basem Naim.
German prosecutors said Mohammed A. was arrested in London on a German arrest warrant and that he was the ringleader of the terror plot last year.
The Mossad in November identified Mohammed Naim as the owner of weapons that were seized in Vienna as part of the multinational investigation that uncovered a plot to attack Jewish and Israeli institutions in Germany.
Naim allegedly helped procure weapons for three suspected Hamas operatives who were nabbed in Berlin a week before the second anniversary of the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.
According to the Mossad, Naim met with his father in Qatar in September 2025 — a month before the second anniversary of the attack — suggesting “possible involvement of Hamas leadership in authorizing and directing terror activity in Europe.”
Hamas members in Turkey were also possibly involved in planning the attack, the Mossad said at the time, adding that the European partnership in countering the threat “reflects growing international recognition of the increasing danger and their determination to thwart any Hamas activity on their territory.”