The court in Rotterdam has acquitted Amin Abou Rashed, chairman of the largest Palestinian association in the Netherlands, of financing Hamas. There is insufficient evidence for that accusation, the court ruled on Wednesday.
The court ignores the expert reports of terrorism expert Ronald Sandee, on which the Public Prosecution Service (OM) largely bases its indictment. The judge writes in the verdict cannot rule out that these are ‘politically or otherwise biased’.
Abou Rashed, who does not object to the use of his full name, has been sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of six months for evading the Sanctions Act and continuing the banned organization Al Aqsa Foundation. In April, the Public Prosecution Service demanded a prison sentence of four years, one of which was conditional, partly because Abou Rashed allegedly transferred approximately 8.4 million euros to Hamas.
Abou Rashed came to the Netherlands in the 1990s and was an important fundraiser for Gaza. The money he raised went to various Gazan welfare organizations. According to the Public Prosecution Service, the schools, orphanages and other organizations to which Abou Rashed’s foundation donated money were controlled by Hamas. That would make the donations punishable because Hamas is on the sanctions list for terrorist organizations.
Terrorism expert Sandee supported these claims in the criminal case, in which he was appointed judicial expert at the request of the Public Prosecution Service. For this, Sandee mainly based himself on Israeli reports, wrote NRC earlier this week. Sandee cited information from the Israeli security service and from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli think tank with close ties to the Israeli intelligence services.
Code of conduct
Sandee previously accused Abou Rashed of ties to Hamas, in 2007 and 2018, while judicial experts must be “impartial” and “not biased” according to the code of conduct. The judge now says that she cannot sufficiently assess the “objectivity and reliability” of judicial expert Sandee and “the soundness of his research”, according to the judgment.
According to the court, the other evidence does not sufficiently show that the money raised by Abou Rashed ended up with charitable organizations controlled by Hamas. These organizations were not on the European or Dutch sanctions list. The court “cannot rule out” that money raised by the foundation benefited family of slain Hamas fighters, but, the court wrote, “this will also apply to other money that entered Gaza.”
The suspect’s primary purpose was to provide humanitarian aid, the court found, “and not to provide financial support in any way to Hamas or organizations affiliated with Hamas.”
With the collaboration of Andreas Kouwenhoven.
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