Pro-Hamas Activist’s Participation in Dutch Trade Mission to Qatar Revealed (Corrected)

On 27 Novem­ber 2023, CarelBrendel.nl report­ed that Amin Abou Rashed, cur­rent­ly detained for sus­pect­ed Hamas financ­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a 2020 Dutch gov­ern­ment trade mis­sion to Qatar. The arti­cle begins:

A mot­ley crew of civ­il ser­vants and man­agers of sports com­pa­nies went to Qatar in March 2020 to strength­en busi­ness ties with the orga­niz­ing coun­try in the run-up to the World Cup. Polit­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble for this trade mis­sion were Sigrid Kaag (D66, Min­is­ter of For­eign Trade) and Bruno Bru­ins (VVD, Min­is­ter for Med­ical Care and Sport). A notable par­tic­i­pant was the Dutch-Pales­tin­ian activist Amin Abou Rashed, top man of the polit­i­cal Hamas lob­by in Europe. He has been in cus­tody for more than five months as a sus­pect of financ­ing this ter­ror­ist move­ment. Since June 22, 2023, well-known Pales­tine activist Amin Abou Rashed and one of his daugh­ters have been in pre-tri­al deten­tion. They are sus­pect­ed of financ­ing the Hamas ter­ror­ist move­ment. “The man who has been described for more than ten years as ‘the Dutch fundrais­er for Hamas’ has now actu­al­ly been arrest­ed on that sus­pi­cion,” the AD not­ed. At the end of Sep­tem­ber, the court in Rot­ter­dam extend­ed the pre-tri­al deten­tion…  [Machine trans­la­tion from Dutch]

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Key Points:

1. Dutch min­is­ters autho­rized a trade mis­sion, includ­ing Abou Rashed, who was lat­er arrest­ed for alleged­ly financ­ing Hamas.
2. The Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice claims Abou Rashed col­lect­ed 6.1 mil­lion euros since 2014 for alleged Hamas financing.
3. The trade mis­sion focused on sports busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in Qatar ahead of the World Cup preparations.
4. Abou Rashed’s sup­port­er claims he served as an advi­sor to the Dutch gov­ern­ment on Pales­tin­ian and minor­i­ty issues.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion from CarelBrendel.nl:

Amin Abou Rashed was not an offi­cial mem­ber of the Dutch busi­ness del­e­ga­tion to Qatar. After the pub­li­ca­tion of my blog it turned out that he attend­ed a few events in Doha, invit­ed by one of the mem­bers of the del­e­ga­tion, pob­a­bly Anne Jelle­ma, who was board mem­ber of Sticht­ing ISRAA. Jelle­ma denied any com­ment to the Dutch newspapers.