Son of senior Hamas official was Shin Bet informant

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The son of a senior Hamas official, who moved from the Gaza Strip to the United States in 2007, has said he was an informant for Israeli intelligence for at least a decade. Mosab Hassan Yousef, who legally changed his name to Joseph after converting to Christianity, is son of Hamas parliamentarian Sheikh Hassan Yousef. He told Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that he was turned by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, in 1997, after serving a year in an Israeli prison. The newspaper also spoke with Joseph’s Shin Bet handler, a “Captain Loai”, who said the Hamas official’s son was the agency’s most prized Hamas informant, and was given the operational alias GREEN PRINCE. He also alleged that Joseph’s covert collaboration culminated during the 2000 Second Intifada, and led to the capture of senior Palestinian leaders, including Hamas’ Ibrahim Hamid and Abdullah Barghouti, and former Fatah leader Marwan Bargouti. It is not known whether Joseph was instrumental in the arrest by the Shin Bet of his father, who is currently serving a six-year prison term in Israel. If Ha’aretz’s revelations are true, they signify a degree of high-level infiltration of Hamas by Shin Bet that goes far beyond any previous understanding by intelligence observers.