As the war between Israel and Palestine gets more brutal, a special cell investigating the stealing of cryptocurrency worth Rs 4 crore in 2019 found that some suspect wallets that told them are being operated by the al Qassam brigades of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group.
The case of Delhi was first reported in 2019 at Paschim Vihar police station, the cops told the Times Of India. After this the investigation was transferred to the anti-terror unit-special cell. In 2021 the investigation was taken over by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Ops unit in the special cell.
Link to Hamas
While the cops could deep trace a recipient wallet IDs they found it difficult to trace the end users of the accounts. However, the Israel's intelligence agency Mossad told their Indian counterparts about some suspected wallets that are operated by the terrorist group for funding.
When the IFSO ran a match on the wallets they found that several wallets which were a part of the Delhi's case were run by the cyber terrorist wing of Hamas.
Many of the wallets that were on the list were seized by the Israel's National Bureau for counter terror financing. After the link was revealed, technical analysis found that one of the seized wallets belonged to Hamas operatives like Ahmed QH Safi in Ramallah in Palestine and Ahmed Marzooq in Giza and Nasser Ibrahim Abdulla in Gaza.
The police also revealed that the cryptocurrencies were routed through various private wallets and then into the accounts held by the terror group.
Former DCP (Special Cell) KPS Malhotra while talking to Times of India said, "yes our investigation had led us to several wallets linked to the al Qassam brigades."
While the brutal war still continues the intelligence agencies are trying to block the attempt of these terror groups to get any more funding. The cyber unit of Israel Police on Tuesday went on to freeze a large number of cryptocurrency accounts that were being operated by the terror group.
The Israel Police took to X (formerly called as Twitter) to say, "The Israel Police's Cyber Unit, in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense, the Israel Security Agency, and other national intelligence agencies, has successfully frozen cryptocurrency accounts used by Hamas for fundraising their activities."
The authorities have also requested Binance to transfer the seized funds to the country's state treasury.
