A London-based activist who helped organise pro-Palestine marches in the capital has been sanction by the US after Donald Trump’s administration alleged he was working on behalf of Hamas.
Zaher Birawi, from Barnet, is said to have held a leadership role within the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), which set up the aid flotilla that Greta Thunberg was on.
Mr Birawi is the chairman of Palestine Forum in Britain (PFB), one of six organisations that make up the Palestine Coalition, which arranged more than 20 protests in London last year.
The British Palestinian, who has lived in the UK for more than 30 years, was targeted as part of a package by the US designed to hit organisations and individuals with “secret ties” to Hamas.
Bury South Christian Wakeford MP Christian Wakeford has previously used parliamentary privilege to name Mr Birawi as one of four “Hamas operatives living in London”.
US Treasury officials On Wednesday night issued sanctions against Mr Birawi and alleged he held a leadership role in the PCPA.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control accused the PCPA of being a Hamas front organisation and claimed the group’s late leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had proclaimed that the group be used as a vehicle to “clandestinely expand” Hamas’s influence abroad.
John Hurley, under-secretary of the US Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said: “Hamas continues to show a callous disregard for the welfare of the Palestinian people.
“The Trump administration will not look the other way while Hamas leadership and enablers exploit the financial system to fund terrorist operations.”
Mr Birawi, who is originally from the West Bank, has always denied links to the terror group and described the accusations as “baseless”.
The 64-year-old has argued against the UK’s proscription of Hamas as a terror group, writing that it would exclude an “essential section of the Palestinian community from the peace process”.
In 2021 he successfully sued the financial database blacklist World-Check after a claim that falsely linked him to terrorism and resulted in his NatWest bank account being frozen.
He said at the time the database had “wrongly and without justification or evidence classified him on a terrorism list”.
But following the move by the US, British ministers are now under increasing pressure to place sanctions on Mr Birawi, who works for an Arabic-language TV station in London.
If they did, he would be subject to his assets being frozen and a potential travel ban.
Tory shadow home secretary Chris Philp, called on the government to sanction Mr Birawi.
He told the Times: “Under no circumstances should Britain be a place of sanctuary for anyone involved in or supportive of terrorist organisations like Hamas.”
