Samer Allawi “offered to use his position as a reporter to promote Hamas interests,” and “traveled to Qatar and met with additional Al Jazeera reporters, who the Shin Bet said were Hamas operatives, and discussed the possibility of using their position to advance Hamas by criticizing the US military in Afghanistan.”
How many more operatives are there? Does al-Jazeera care to find out? “Al Jazeera journalist admits to being Hamas operative,” by Yaakov Katz for the Jerusalem Post, September 26:
During a Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) interrogation, former Al Jazeera Afghanistan bureau chief Samer Allawi said he traveled to Syria to help a terror group.
Allawi reached a deal with the Israel State Prosecutor’s Office on Sunday, under which he will receive a suspended sentence of three years, after he confessed to conspiring in Hamas operations.
Allawi, a Palestinian, was arrested in August on the border between the West Bank and Jordan.
He said he was recruited into Hamas in 1993 and served there until 2004 in a senior committee that oversees Hamas operations abroad, and is responsible for fundraising.
In 2001 and 2003 he traveled to Syria where he reported on his activities to Mousa Aba Marzook, deputy to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, in Damascus.
Aba Marzook offered Allawi to become an official Hamas representative in Iran, but he rejected the offer.
During the interrogation with the Shin Bet, Allawi said he attended a meeting in 2000 in Saudi Arabia in which he said he would be part of a terror operation on behalf of Hamas. He also offered to use his position as a reporter to promote Hamas interests.
In 2006, Allawi traveled to Qatar and met with additional Al Jazeera reporters, who the Shin Bet said were Hamas operatives, and discussed the possibility of using their position to advance Hamas by criticizing the US military in Afghanistan.
During his interrogation, the Shin Bet said he also discussed his activities as a member of the mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1988 to 1992, during which he said that he participated in a rebel raid on an Afghan military base and participated in guerrilla operations against Soviet forces.