Britain’s charity regulator has launched an investigation into the Al-Khair Foundation, a Muslim nonprofit organization accused of bankrolling Hamas. The investigation comes after U.K. police arrested a top Islamist official linked to the organization and seek to extradite him to the United States.
[T]he defendant coordinated his actions closely with a senior leader of Hamas and knew the resources were going to that group rather than to needy non-combatants.
The Al-Khair Foundation operates in the Gaza Strip as a partner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA), after signing a £500,000 (U.S. $777,605) memorandum of understanding with the agency in 2015.
On July 31, police arrested Turkish national Mohammad Yousef al-Hasna, described by the U.S. Department of Justice as the “global director” of a “sham charity.” The DOJ charged Al-Hasna with “conspiring to provide material support to Hamas, conspiring to finance terrorism, and financing terrorism, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.”
The Justice Department did not name the nonprofit. Nevertheless, details in the court filing and matching Charity Commission records indicate that the charity is the Al-Khair Foundation, Nordic Monitor reported. In a statement, the Charity Commission said Hasna is “employed by an organization Al-Khair Foundation works with to deliver aid in Gaza.”
Charity Refuses to Name Hamas
In response to the arrest, the Al-Khair Foundation asserted that Hasna works for one of its overseas implementing partners and not directly for the charity. The charity did not mention Hamas in its statement but emphasized its procedures for ensuring that partner organizations and individuals are neither subject to sanctions nor blacklisted.
“As a prudent compliance measure, we have temporarily paused any future funding to the implementing partner organization while the relevant authorities carry out their investigations,” the statement said. “Given that this is an ongoing matter, and having taken legal advice, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further at this stage.” Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) asked the Al-Khair Foundation to clarify why it had failed to mention Hamas explicitly in its statement but has not received a response as of press time.
The Al-Khair Foundation, which UNRWA describes as “the third-largest Muslim charity in the United Kingdom,” recorded an income of more than £74 million in the financial year ending July 31, 2025, the Charity Commission revealed.
“Due to the concerns of possible serious risk to charitable funds, the Commission has issued a legal order restricting certain financial transactions by the charity without the Commission’s prior consent,” the commission noted, adding that it would investigate the charity’s links to Hasna.
UK Lawyers for Israel Name Multiple Hamas-linked Al-Khair Employees
The charity watchdog said it was acting on a complaint but did not reveal the complainant’s identity. UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) reported on its website that it lodged the complaint with the Charity Commission against the Al-Khair Foundation on July 9, 2026.
UKLFI said that its report contained evidence of Al-Khair’s “operational involvement” with Hamas, including alleged financing, propaganda and support for Hamas-related activities. It identified Hasna as “an individual employed by an organization that the Al-Khair Foundation works with to deliver aid in Gaza.”
The legal organization also named several Hamas-linked employees of Al-Khair, including Adham Abu Salmiya, identified as director of marketing and Arab relations for Al-Khair’s Turkey branch, who formerly acted as a “Hamas emergency services spokesman.”
The Israeli Defense Forces identified Husam Mansour, a former Al-Khair Foundation director, as a platoon commander in Hamas’s Internal Security Forces and an operative in its military wing after his death in July 2024.
NGO Monitor Laments Aid US Taxpayer-Funded Collusion with Hamas
Hasna “allegedly used a purported humanitarian aid organization to raise funds and provide financing and supplies to Hamas, a ruthless international terrorist organization,” said Assistant Director Jarod Brown of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “According to the criminal complaint, the defendant coordinated his actions closely with a senior leader of Hamas and knew the resources were going to that group rather than to needy non-combatants.”
This isn’t the first time the Al-Khair Foundation has faced such accusations. In 2024, Kharon, a financial intelligence firm founded by former U.S. Treasury Department officials, reported on Al-Khair’s partnership in Gaza with Azzam Aid, an NGO founded by former Afghanistan-based militant Hudhayfa Azzam. Azzam Aid’s fundraising appeals include images and quotes from Hudhayfa’s father, Al-Qaeda progenitor Abdullah Azzam.
NGO Monitor told FWI that it has tracked foreign charities’ “troubling coordination” with Hamas’s Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) and its leader Ghazi Hamad for years. “This arrest is a welcome step in choking off Hamas’s continued use of global sham charities to prop up its terror army,” it noted.
“Of continued concern is that multiple US NGOs have also worked closely with [the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development]. NGO Monitor has documented that U.S.-based 501(c)(3)s Mercy Corps, ANERA, and Rahma Worldwide have coordinated with MoSD on projects—and Mercy Corps and ANERA have even received US government funding,” it added.
IDF Report Exposes Hamas Infiltration into UNRWA
In April 2025, the Israel Defense Forces published a report exposing evidence of extensive Hamas infiltration into UNRWA. According to the dossier, among the 12,521 UNRWA employees in Gaza, at least 1,462 (12 percent) are members of Hamas or other terrorist organizations. Some UNRWA employees actively participated in the October 7 attacks on Israel.
The findings expose “like never before the unprecedented infiltration and exploitation of a UN agency by terrorist organizations,” the report stated. “They illustrate how, in a systematic process, throughout the years, billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, mostly from Western countries, in practice served Hamas’s war machine.”
Records from the Hamas administration reveal that it weaponized humanitarian aid by exercising systemic coercion and surveillance over foreign NGOs, while aid agencies covered up or downplayed its atrocities, FWI reported.
Arabic-language documents from the Gaza Interior Security Mechanism, a unit within the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security, confirmed that NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally, an investigation by NGO Monitor reported.
“The U.K. has long been far too permissive when it comes to charities being used and abused by Islamist extremists and foreign states,” a spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) told FWI. “The Charity Commission has been extraordinarily slow on the uptake, so these allegations come as no surprise at all.”
“The Commission has the powers to proactively inspect, which should mean visiting certain mosques with charitable status to see what is being preached, and demanding much more detailed accounts and returns from charities which appear to be linked to overseas terrorist organisations—at the very least,” CAA noted.
“Charities receive relief at the expense of the taxpayer and the Commission should be ensuring that they are working for the benefit of the public, not extremists, terrorists, and despotic theocratic regimes,” it added.
