Terror fundraiser in MoS sting jailed for 2.5 years
AN IRISH-BASED Islamic State fundraiser, exposed by The Mail on Sunday, has been jailed.
Cash collected in Britain and Ireland by Hassan Bal, 26, who lived in Waterford, was funnelled to Syria where Isis terrorists used it to buy weapons, clothes and sex slaves. Having previously pleaded guilty to providing funds for Isis, Bal – born in Britain to a mother of Irish descent – was this week handed a jail term of four-and-a-half years at Waterford Circuit Court. Two years of the sentence were suspended. Judge Eugene O’Kelly praised the MoS investigation, telling the court: ‘I would like to recognise the role of the investigative reporter at The Mail on Sunday in this case and the importance of a free press in a democratic society.’ During the sentencing, gardaí said they had found a message on Bal’s phone threatening revenge on the reporter who exposed him and the MoS’s offices.
‘He [the reporter] took me for a ride. I swear brother, get me some toys and I will go straight to The Mail on Sunday,’ it read. The undercover operation began when a reporter, posing as an extremist, contacted Omar Hussain, a Syria-based extremist known as the ‘Supermarket Jihadi’.
Hussain instructed him to donate to Isis, and put him in touch with Abu Issa al-Amriki, an American jihadi in Syria.
The reporter was told by al-Amriki to contact an Isis fundraiser in the UK called Abu Abdul Rahman al-Britani.
Communicating via an encrypted app called Kik, al-Britani told the reporter to drop off a brown envelope stuffed with cash at a London builders merchant from where it would be collected by a courier.
Shortly after picking up the envelope, which contained no money, the courier was arrested and later identified as Omar Bal, 30.
Following an investigation involving the London Metropolitan Police, the Garda, Interpol and the FBI, Omar Bal’s brother, Hassan, was arrested. He later admitted to being al-Britani. No charges were brought against Omar Bal and the investigation into him has been dropped.