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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Shin Bet foils Hamas kidnapping plot |
| 2014-01-16 |
| The Shin Bet foiled an attempt by a Hamas-affiliated group to set up a terrorist cell in the West Bank for the purpose of kidnapping Israelis. The plot was directed by Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, according to the Shin Bet. In a statement, the Shin Bet said, "Those involved were in their first stages of planning the attack." The Israeli intelligence service named Muhammad Bel, in the Eshel prison since 2008, as a suspect who recruited two Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank for the plot. The recruits have been named as Ali Harub, serving a sentence for belonging to a military terrorist cell, planning attacks, and manufacturing bombs and Molotov cocktails, and Rajab Salah Al-din, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, imprisoned since May 2012 for three failed kidnapping attempts. The investigation revealed that top levels of the Kataib Al-Mujahadin terror group were involved in planning the attacks. Bel was in touch with a contact in Gaza, named as Amar Khalil Kassam, who is in charge of dealing with prisoners and who answers directly to the head of the organization. A security source said that the purpose of the plot was to enable a Gaza-based terror group to gain operatives from the West Bank, who could then use their own associates outside of prison to organize a kidnapping. The Shin Bet said, "The Holy Warriors Brigade is a terror group that splintered off from the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and adopted extremist Islamic characteristics." It is headed by Asad Abu Sharia, a Gaza resident and terrorist, who took over the group in 2007 after his brother, Omar Abu Sharia was killed in an IAF strike in Gaza in 2006. The group is in close touch with Hamas in Gaza, and has been involved in rocket attacks on Israel, shootings against the IDF, and setting off bombs on the border between Gaza and Israel. Cooperation with Hamas includes training, and assistance, as well as financial support and weapons transfers for attacks, and the smuggling of arms to Gaza. The Shin Bet said, "We can say that in effect, the Holy Warriors Brigades is a Hamas front group in every way." |
| Posted by:ryuge |