A Hamas fugitive who commanded the terror group’s West Bank activity is living in a London council property he recently purchased at an enormous discount.
According to The Times, Muhammad Qassem Sawalha received a remarkable £112,000 price decrease.
He evaded Israeli security services by using a relative’s passport.
The 62-year-old fled to Britain in the 1990s and later ended up obtaining UK citizenship.
Sawalha continued to work for Hamas and held secret talks about “revitalising” terrorist acts in Israel”.
He later helped launder money to support activities in both Gaza and the West Bank, an indictment from the US Department of Justice has revealed.
Sawalha met Kremlin officals Moscow as part of Hamas’ official delegation and served on Hamas’s politburo between 2013 and 2017.
Israel designated Sawalha, who has never been charged with an offence in the UK, as belonging to Hamas and stressed he will be arrested if he returns to the country.
Despite his involvement, the father-of-three obtained British citizenship in the early 2000s.
According to Home Office policy, anyone who “incites, justifies, or glorifies” terrorist attacks or “seeks to provoke others to terrorist acts” can be denied citizenship.
Later, Sawalha was called to Parliament by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for a Gaza-related event just before he succeeded Ed Milliband in 2015.
In 2003, he became a council renter in a two-story house with a yard and a garage in the London Borough of Barnet.
The local authority has the highest Jewish population in the country, with 56,616 people accounting for about one-fifth of the total population.
Sawalha and his 56-year-old wife Sawsan used the Right to Buy initiative to buy their home in June 2021 for £320,700.