For Years Before a Charity Leader’s Arrest, Its Hamas Links Had Mounted

The U.S. Justice Department charged a Türkiye-based man it called the global director of a U.K.-registered “sham charity” last week for allegedly coordinating with Hamas leaders to supply the group “under the guise of humanitarian aid” in Gaza.

DOJ accused Mohammad Hasna, whose LinkedIn lists him as an employee of the London-headquartered Al-Khair Foundation, of arranging cash deliveries to Hamas and coordinating the delivery of supplies, food, and other items while misrepresenting their final destinations. 

Al-Khair, which was not directly named in the July 24 criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, distanced itself from any Hamas-related activities and from Hasna in a statement after his arrest Friday, saying he was “employed by one of our implementing partner organisations.” 

But Kharon research shows how the foundation’s network, including that foreign affiliate, connects to Hamas’s broader universe — and to broadcasts on British TV.

Update: The U.K.’s Charity Commission announced Friday, in a statement acknowledging Hasna’s U.S. charges, that it was investigating Al-Khair Foundation over a complaint alleging that “the charity and its partners had connections to Hamas” and that Al-Khair “had funded the organisation.”

The regulator’s statement also said it had issued a legal order restricting certain financial transactions by Al-Khair, because of “concerns of possible serious risk to charitable funds.”

Bigger picture: The charges against Hasna and the U.K. probe followed the announcement last week that President Trump’s Board of Peace had reached an agreement with Hamas to end the conflict. The plan, which Israel said it rejected Thursday, included a “road map” for disarming the designated terrorist group and weakening its influence in the region.

The U.K. Foundation’s Ties and Hasna’s Role

Al-Khair Foundation was established in the U.K. in November 2008, under founder and chair Qasim Rashid Ahmad. According to the Charity Commission, it recorded an income of over £74 million pounds (about $100 million) in the financial year ending in July 2025.

The “implementing partner” the charity appears to be referring to in its statement is Al-Khair Foundation Middle East, based in Türkiye like Hasna. But a Kharon review suggests the two aren’t so separate.

• Al-Khair Middle East identifies Al-Khair U.K. online as “our main office.” 
• Al-Khair U.K., which listed a “Turkey office” in its annual reports through 2023, continues to document activity out of the Turkish branch on its own Facebook pages.
• Ahmad has also visited Al-Khair Middle East on a few occasions, a Kharon review found, including for a February 2024 interview it posted online.

Israel has targeted employees of both the U.K. and Türkiye offices of the foundation with airstrikes during its war in Gaza, accusing Al-Khair writ large of funding terrorism and casting those killed as Hamas operatives. Al-Khair has denied such claims and says it is doing legitimate humanitarian work.

• “We transfer funds to our implementing partners only through established banking channels, with payments designated for specific, pre-approved humanitarian programmes,” the U.K. organization said in its statement Tuesday.

Where Hasna fits in: A graduate of the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, Hasna worked in the relief sector in Gaza for nearly a decade before becoming the regional director for Al-Khair Foundation Middle East.

• His previous roles in the Gaza Strip, according to his social media pages, included serving as a representative of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organizations, a charity that has fundraised alongside Hamas leadership.

A graphic that Al-Khair Middle East posted on X in September 2023 listed Hasna as “head of country offices,” with a U.K. phone number.

Through his management and operational role at the U.K. Al-Khair, the U.S. now alleges, Hasna exploited the charity’s infrastructure for the benefit of Hamas, by routing goods through its warehouses to ensure delivery to Hamas’s networks in Gaza.

A TV network: Meanwhile, Ahmad, the Al-Khair founder, is also a founder and/or listed director of five U.K. television-production and broadcasting companies, according to corporate records and a company website. The networks, four of which Al-Khair owns or controls, provide the foundation with a messaging arm.

The U.S. criminal complaint references one of the channels in particular: “In or about 2009,” it says, “the Sham Charity acquired a television network, which it uses to broadcast Islamic-based content, to conduct fundraising for purported charitable initiatives, and to generate commercial advertising income.”

• That description matches Iqra TV, which Ahmad founded and still directs, according to his X and LinkedIn pages. The network states on its website that, among its other programming, it “also showcases Al-Khair Foundation’s work, as it delivers emergency and developmental aid to the world’s most needy.”
• Iqra TV, along with the Ahmad-founded Islam TV, sponsored a 2023 Al-Khair fundraising campaign for Gaza, according to posters posted online at the time. Videos posted to social media that November then showed these Al-Khair posters on the back of trucks crossing into Gaza from Egypt.

Hamas Links Through Personnel and Partnerships

Hasna is not the first or only Al-Khair manager to be linked to Hamas.

Al-Khair Foundation Middle East employee Adham Ibrahim Hassan Abu Salmiah, whom the organization referred to as of 2023 as its “Media and Arab Relations Official,” has worked for Hamas controlled-ministries. Before X suspended his accounts, Abu Salmiah also often posted messages in support of Hamas and its founder, Ahmed Yassin. 

• In 2021, one Abu Salmiah post referred to Yassin as “the disabled man who revived a nation” and an “icon.” 
• A post in November 2023 included an image of Abu Salmiah as a boy with Yassin.

Another employee for the Middle Eastern branch, whose LinkedIn page lists him as a Digital Transformation Advisor, previously worked for Hamas-run al-Aqsa Radio.

Connecting the dots: Al-Khair Foundation Middle East has worked with various other charities linked to Hamas in recent years, too. 

In July 2022 and February 2023, for instance, it participated in a convoy sending humanitarian aid to Syria organized by another U.K.-based, Hamas-linked charity, Miles of Smiles.

• The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned that charity’s president, Ahmed Brahimi, in June 2025 for allegedly providing financial support to Hamas.
• Another Miles of Smiles manager, Essam Mustafa, founded the U.K.-based Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, also known as Interpal, which the U.S. designated back in 2003 for allegedly hiding the “flow of money to Hamas.”

More recently, since the start of the war in Gaza, Al-Khair Foundation Middle East has partnered repeatedly on fundraising with Azzam Aid, a Canada-registered charity. As Kharon reported in 2024, Azzam Aid was established by the son of Abdullah Azzam, an al-Qaida founder and mentor to Usama bin Laden, to honor his father’s legacy.

The Bottom Line

Hasna’s U.S. arrest identified him and Al-Khair as allegedly important figures in Hamas’s foreign support channels. But Hamas and its fronts rely on many such individuals and organizations abroad — including in the West — to help advance their goals.

This story was updated Friday with news of the U.K. Charity Commission’s investigation.

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