Muhammad Sawalha

Muhammad Kazem Rashid Maruf Sawalha (born 1961), also known by the name Abu Abada, is a senior Hamas activist. He is the president of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and currently resides in London, to which he fled from the West Bank in 1990, using forged documents to escape Israeli security authorities.

Before emigrating to the UK, Sawalha was Hamas’s West Bank military chief. In addition, he supervised the allocation and supply of large amounts of money to Hamas operatives, an activity that led to his being named in a 2004 U.S. indictment against Hamas operative Muhammad Salah.

In addition to his work with Hamas and BMI, Sawalha is a frequent guest on the Islamist Al-Hiwar television station, and is affiliated with numerous Palestinian and Islamic charities. He has had a hand in organizing several of the flotillas and land convoys attempting to reach the Gaza Strip, through which he has transferred financial aid to Hamas. Sawalha helped found the Muslim Association of Britain and is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque. In addition, he signed the 2009 Istanbul Declaration, which reaffirms jihad as the proper means to achieving goals such as unifying Israel under Palestinian control.

Sawalha was born in Tubas, West Bank, in 1961. Sawalha studied religion at Amman University beginning in 1980.

In 1988, after studying at Amman University, Sawalha returned to the West Bank, where he lived in Al-Bireh until 1990. He taught at a religious school in Al-Ram and later at the Islamic college (Kuliyat al-Da’wah) in Jerusalem and in Beit Hanina.

Sawalha was a senior Hamas activist in the West Bank, and helped establish Hamas' West Bank headquarters in 1989-90. He also instructed regional Hamas commanders to set up military networks, establishing links between local operatives who had not yet been detained and operatives in the United States. After the exposure of his Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank, Israeli security forces declared him a wanted operative. Wanted by Israel, in October 1990 he used forged documents to escape to Jordan, and from there moved on to Britain. He continues to carry out anti-Israeli activities from there.

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