Mohammad El Halabi

Mohammad El Halabi is a Palestinian aid worker and Gaza manager for World Vision International in Palestine detained by Israel since 2016. On 15 June, 2022, he was found guilty of "membership of a terrorist organisation, financing terrorist activities, having "transmitted information to the enemy", and possession of a weapon". World Vision said there would be an appeal. Independent auditors and the Australian government found "no evidence of wrongdoing or diversion of funds."

By July 2021, the court proceedings against Halabi had been running for five years without conclusion or the materialization of a credible body of evidence, despite a cumulative 165 court sessions, a count that had risen to 167 by March 2022. The trial has dragged on for so long that under Israeli law, the Supreme Court must actively extend it every three months. The latest 90-day extension was approved on 22 February 2022.

On 15 June, 2022, he was found guilty of "membership of a terrorist organisation, financing terrorist activities, having "transmitted information to the enemy", and possession of a weapon". World Vision said there would be an appeal. Independent auditors and the Australian government found "no evidence of wrongdoing or diversion of funds."

In 2020, four United Nations special rapporteurs demanded Mr. Halabi be given a fair trial or be released unconditionally. The experts said that after his arrest, Mr. Halabi was questioned for 50 days without access to a lawyer and that "What is happening to Mr. el-Halabi bears no relation to the trial standards we expect from democracies, and is part of a pattern where Israel uses secret evidence to indefinitely detain hundreds of Palestinians."

In November 2020, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Michael Lynk and three colleagues stated: "What is happening to [Halabi] bears no relation to the trial standards we expect from democracies, and is part of a pattern where Israel uses secret evidence to indefinitely detain hundreds of Palestinians," while noting that it was "particularly disturbing that the prosecution is relying upon confessions allegedly obtained by force while he was denied access to a lawyer, and on testimony from undercover informers." The UN special rapporteurs demanded Mr. Halabi be given a fair trial or be released unconditionally.

In March 2017, the Australian government concluded a study that found no evidence any funds had been diverted. This was followed in July 2017 by an independent forensic audit commissioned by World Vision that similarly found no funds missing and no evidence of criminal activity. Since March 2021, Halabi's defense has claimed that in addition to the alleged confession being coerced, the original document recording the confession appears to have been lost.

Halabi was arrested on June 15, 2016 at the Erez Crossing into the Gaza Strip and charged by Israeli prosecutors with channeling funds to Hamas. This was based on accusations by Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency that Halabi had siphoned off $48 million in funds from the budget of World Vision, of which he was a program manager, to Hamas over the course of six years.

Speaking in 2016, Tim Costello, chief executive of World Vision Australia, labelled the charges "profoundly incomprehensible", noting the stark mismatch between the Israeli Government's claims and the NGO's total budget in the area: "What we know is our total operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5 million, and yet the figures being circulated are up to $50 million has been diverted from him."

In a statement by World Vision, the NGO said Halabi "was the manager of our Gaza operations only since October 2014", and that "before that time he managed only portions of the Gaza budget", when, at his managerial level, the organization's accountability processes would have capped his signing authority at $15,000.

In 2003, Halabi married his wife Ola, with whom he has five children. In 2004, in response to the declining conditions in Gaza, Halabi swapped his engineering career for aid work.

Halabi was born in 1978 in the Jabalia refugee camp which his family had fled to from their village 15 miles to the north during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. Halabi’s father Khalil worked at UNRWA, working closely with the organization's director for Gaza and attending meetings with the likes of Tony Blair and John Kerry.