Jihadi fundraiser faces years in jail after MoS ‘sting’
ARRESTED White UK Muslim caught in MoS sting collecting jihadi ‘cash’
AN AGENT of the Islamic State was facing up to 20 years in jail last night after an undercover sting by The Mail on Sunday.
Hassan Bal, 26, was at the centre of an international fundraising operation in Britain and Ireland. Cash collected by his network of couriers was funnelled to Syria and used to buy weapons, clothes and equipment for jihadi fighters.
As the key prosecution witness at British-born Bal’s trial next month, a Mail on Sunday reporter was due to give evidence from behind a screen to protect his identity.
But the trial was called off after Bal pleaded guilty at a hearing last Friday in Waterford, Ireland, to two counts of fundraising for IS. He will be sentenced in April.
Our undercover operation – in which we secretly photographed a courier collecting what Bal believed to be cash – led to an investigation involving the Met’s Counter-terrorism Command, the FBI, Interpol and the Irish Gardai.
Bal was arrested in April last year at the rented Waterford flat he shared with his pregnant wife.
One charge he admitted involved sending £350 to a jihadi contact in Brcko, Bosnia, by money transfer, knowing the money would then be sent to IS in Syria.
He also pleaded guilty to attempting to collect cash from a man in London known to him as Omar Abu Aziz through the use of an intermediary on October 23, 2015.
Omar Abu Aziz was in fact MoS undercover reporter Omar Wahid. And the ‘intermediary’ tasked with collecting the cash was Bal’s elder brother, Adam Locksley, 30, an electrician and plumber.
The MoS launched its investigation into IS fundraising in 2015. Wahid contacted an infamous British extremist called Omar Hussain, 30 – also known as the Supermarket Jihadi – in Syria, who was urging followers to help fund jihad.
Hussain put Wahid – posing as an IS sympathiser – in touch with an American fighter in Syria called Abu Issa Al-Amriki.
Amriki told Wahid to send 1,000 dollars or euros, suggesting he steal the money from non-Muslims.
He wrote: ‘Stealing from kuffar [ non- believers] for mujahideen [jihad fighters] is halal [lawful].’
Wahid was given the name of a British-based IS fundraiser, Abu Abdul-Rahman Britani, who would arrange for the cash to be collected. It is suspected Britani and Bal are one and the same. During several days of often tense exchanges, the reporter gained Britani’s trust – and was eventually told to bring the money in a brown envelope to a builders’ warehouse in Cricklewood, North London,
Instead of cash, the reporter put an A-Z map book in the envelope and left it on top of a yellow cement bag.
Waiting nearby were members of an undercover Mail on Sunday team, poised to secretly photograph whoever came for the ‘cash’.
Locksley then arrived and picked up t he package while appearing to receive instructions on a mobile phone.
The Mail on Sunday contacted police immediately and we handed over our evidence on Locksley,
The Met, FBI, Interpol and Gardai were all involved
and all the communications with Britani, Amriki and Hussain. Locksley was dramatically arrested near his flat, which was later raided by Metropolitan Police detectives.
He was on police bail for almost a year until he was discharged with no further action taken.
In April last year, Amriki and his American wife, Umm Issa Amriki, were both killed in a drone strike by the US military.
The Pentagon later described them both as ‘recruiters for IS.’
The fate of Supermarket Jihadi Hussain, is less clear, with some media reports earlier this year saying he might have been executed by IS for disobeying orders.
On Friday, Bal was remanded in custody until his next court appearance on April 10.