One of the few times Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply.

Mohammed El Halabi is accused of stealing relief money and giving it to Hamas for their war effort against Israel. But five years on, the evidence against him looks seriously flawed

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On 4 August, three weeks after the raid, Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service made an extraordinary announcement. It said that Halabi had confessed to diverting $7.2m a year, for the past seven years, to the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. More than $1m a year had allegedly been delivered in cash to combat units. In total, Halabi was accused of stealing up to $50m meant for desperate Palestinians and giving it to Hamas to buy rockets and build tunnels. If true, it would be perhaps the largest theft of aid money in history.

For the Israeli government it was a PR coup. It had long accused Hamas of diverting international aid intended for Gaza to fund its wars against the Jewish state. Now it claimed it had proof. “We were all totally shocked by the scale of the allegations – the Israelis hadn’t given us any warning, just a big announcement,” says Sharon Marshall, World Vision’s head of communications based in Canada.

World Vision, which was founded in the US in 1950, is one of the world’s biggest charities, with an annual budget of more than $2bn. Heavily funded by western governments and US Christian groups, it operates in more than 80 countries and works to support more than 40 million of the world’s poorest children. The arrest of one of its directors made headlines around the world. Foreign governments, including Australia and Germany, stopped all funding to World Vision’s projects in Gaza.

On 11 August 2016, then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a populist with a knack for seizing the political moment, made a special address on his official YouTube channel. “I, the prime minister of Israel, care more about Palestinians than their own leaders,” he said in English, speaking straight into the camera in his clipped American accent. “A few days ago the world learned that Hamas, the terrorist organisation that rules Gaza, stole millions of dollars from humanitarian organisations like World Vision and the United Nations.” He concluded: “Hamas stole critical support for Palestinian children so they could kill our children.”

Yet gaps in the Israeli case rapidly appeared. Israel alleges Halabi was an underground Hamas operative who infiltrated the charity and silenced his colleagues through fear, but those who know Halabi reject these accusations. They describe Halabi as a dedicated family man who was supportive to colleagues, opposed Hamas politically and was, above all, committed to delivering aid to his people. Israel’s case has been further undermined by an independent forensic audit of World Vision’s operations, conducted by one of the world’s largest accountancy firms, which found no funds missing and no evidence of criminal activity.

Halabi has been in prison for five years and two months while the case drags through the Israeli courts. If found guilty, he faces decades in prison. The prosecution rested heavily on secret evidence, some of which even the defence team say they were not allowed to view, prompting a UN special rapporteur to condemn proceedings as “not worthy of a democratic state”.

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By March 2017, Halabi had been in jail for nine months. The media had long stopped reporting the story, with Donald Trump’s first chaotic months in office gripping global attention. That month, the Australian government completed a review of its funding of World Vision in Gaza – it had given them $8.1m for Gaza projects between 2014 and 2016, more than 25% of World Vision’s entire Gaza budget, the charity told me. The Australian government concluded that there was no evidence any funds had been diverted. Four months later, the review World Vision had commissioned, from DLA Piper and auditors from Deloitte, was also completed. Its contents have remained classified until now.

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They found no sign of any missing funds, and no evidence Halabi was working for Hamas – in fact, they reported that he consistently sought to distance the organisation from them. The closest they found to impropriety were a few times Halabi had slightly overstepped his authority – signing off a bill for a few hundred dollars more than his limit of $15,000, for example. But they found nothing that could justify any of the Israeli claims. Crucially, they concluded that World Vision’s monitoring and evaluation systems had been robust. “I do NGO investigations in difficult parts of the world … and I did not see anything out of the ordinary here from a control perspective,” Ingerman said.

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Acquittals of Palestinians in Israeli courts are rare, so for the accused, going to trial represents a serious risk of a prison sentence. Many of the accused enter into plea deals in which they accept some or all charges in exchange for a reduced sentence. Supporters of the plea system argue that it enables the quicker processing of cases, while critics say it corners Palestinians into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.

“In some cases [the accused] understand that the chances of being found not guilty are very slim, and the chances of having a fair trial are not high,” Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, told me. “Therefore, to shorten the time and have some certainty regarding when they will get out, they will accept a plea deal, even though they may not be guilty.”

Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli lawyer who has defended many Palestinians, said the Israeli legal system is set up around these deals. “If Palestinian defendants were to say they were no longer doing plea deals, the system would collapse the next day,” he said.

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Shortly before each day’s proceedings began, Halabi would enter flanked by two prison officers, the chains on his feet clinking as he shuffled to a seat behind a plexiglass barrier. He sat for hours focused on the discussions, even though they took place in Hebrew, with the quality of Arabic translation often poor. He would wave to any World Vision staff who came to offer support. One time in 2018 when I was in court he spoke to the World Vision staff briefly before the court was in session, saying, “I must be patient.” He told them he filled his days in jail by teaching English to other prisoners and seeking to de-radicalise inmates who sympathised with Islamic State. “Of the four, I have convinced three,” he said.

The case dragged on. At different times, chief justice Zlotchover accused the defence and prosecution of sloppy work. Judge Raz-Levi often sat with her head in her hands, looking bored. One of the court-appointed Hebrew-Arabic translators seemed so poor that a Palestinian defence witness under examination barely understood proceedings.

Halabi is able to refuse a deal not just because of moral conviction, but also because he has the financial support to do so, with his hefty legal bill being covered by World Vision. Very few Palestinians would be able to afford such principled determination. But the personal toll is high. Halabi’s five children have lived most of their lives without their father. His youngest son, Faris, a baby in 2016, barely knows him. Halabi’s brother Hamed said the children had suffered. “Ramadan is the hardest time – it’s when the family should be together. There have now been six Ramadans where they didn’t have their father.”

At the centre of the case against Halabi is his alleged confession. Back in August 2016, when Shin Bet announced he had confessed, they gave few details, and the truth is still elusive. For several weeks after his arrest, Halabi was prevented from seeing a lawyer. During this time, he was interrogated by Israeli officers, to whom he denied every accusation, his legal team says. He was put in a cell with other Palestinian prisoners, one of whom called himself Abu Ibrahim. This man said he was from Hamas, but Halabi told his lawyers Abu Ibrahim was one of a number of spies Israel has throughout the prison systems, nicknamed asafeer, or “sparrows” in Arabic. Abu Ibrahim informed the Israeli authorities that Halabi confessed to him. Much rests on this man’s account, but his testimony was heard behind closed doors.

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Halabi maintains he was beaten up by Israeli interrogators before he was put in a cell with Abu Ibrahim, where he remained for more than a week. The one time I was able to speak to him briefly in court, Halabi said he had hearing problems due to being punched in the head. The Israeli security services deny wrongdoing. The UN human rights body, which sent a lawyer to most public court sessions, has warned that his treatment under interrogation “may amount to torture”.

His lawyer, Hanna, said Halabi told him that, after days trapped in a room with Abu Ibrahim, he could hold out no more, and said whatever the agent wanted him to say. Hanna said Halabi believed the confession was so wild, and the details so clearly unbelievable, that the case would fall apart in court. “He says he knew Abu Ibrahim was a collaborator,” Hanna said. “From the first minute the [police] investigator entered the room, he said: ‘All I have said I was [forced] to say by Abu Ibrahim. It is all false, you can check it.’”

Hanna argued that the confession was given under duress, and therefore could not be used in court. After six months going back and forth, in June 2020, the district court ruled with the state: the confession was admissible. With that, Halabi’s hopes of freedom dimmed.

So much for "the only democracy in the Middle East".