A senior Hamas operative who served as the Jerusalem-based liaison between Hamas operatives in Saudi Arabia and activists in the West Bank is under arrest, Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said Tuesday. Ya'akub Abu Assab, 33, of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Souana was apprehended last month in a joint Shin Bet-Jerusalem police sting operation. A court-imposed gag order which was in place on the case was lifted Tuesday afternoon. "This is a very serious affair of a terror organization illicitly operating in east Jerusalem," Franco said.
During the suspect's interrogation it emerged that Assab served as the top Hamas official operating in Jerusalem and was the point-man between Hamas officials based in Saudi Arabia, with whom he was in Internet contact, and those in the West Bank, Franco said at a press conference at Jerusalem police headquarters. Assab has not been charged to date, but the police chief said that he faces multiple charges for his illicit activities.
Exploiting the freedom of movement afforded to him by his blue Israeli identification card, the top east-Jerusalem based Hamas official received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Saudi-Arabia-based Hamas officials, as well as directives for Hamas operations which he passed on to the activists in the West Bank, the police chief said. The money was transferred to Jerusalem via messengers as well as by money-changers and was used to support the families of Palestinian suicide bombers as well to fund its West Bank operations and its social and educational institutions, he added. Several hundreds thousand shekels were also transferred to two east Jerusalem based Hamas offices, which were illegally operating in the city. The offices were shut down last week by police in the wake of the arrests made in the case.