2024-04-10T11:57:57+00:00
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/ A security source reported, on Wednesday, the killing of a Lebanese money changer subject to sanctions from Washington, which accuses him of facilitating the transfer of money from Iran to the military wing of the Hamas movement, near the capital, Beirut.
The source told Agence France-Presse that Muhammad Sorour was found dead after being hit by no less than five bullets, yesterday, Tuesday, in a house in the town of Beit Mery overlooking the Lebanese capital.
The source indicated that Sorour was carrying a sum of money that was not stolen by the perpetrators of the crime.
For its part, the Lebanese National News Agency reported, on Tuesday evening, that the body of the 57-year-old “citizen (M.E.S.)” was found near Beit Mery.
The security source confirmed to Agence France-Presse that this man is the same Sorour who is targeted by US sanctions.
The source said that Sorour was working in financial institutions affiliated with the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah.
In August 2019, the US Treasury Department announced the imposition of sanctions on four individuals, including Sorour, on charges of facilitating the transfer of “tens of millions of dollars from the Quds Force,” which is entrusted with foreign operations in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, “to Hamas (…) via Hezbollah in Lebanon.” (…) in order to launch terrorist operations originating in the Gaza Strip.”
The US Treasury indicated at the time that Sorour was “responsible for transferring tens of millions of dollars annually from the Quds Force to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of Hamas.
She noted that by 2014, Sorour “was responsible for all financial transfers” between the two parties and that he had a “long history of working at Bait Al Mal Bank.”
In 2006, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control classified “Bait Al-Mal” as an institution “owned, controlled by, or operating for or on behalf of Hezbollah.”
In early March 2024, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Asian and Middle Eastern Affairs in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, Jesse Baker, visited Beirut, where he urged Lebanese political and financial officials to prevent the transfer of funds to Hamas from Lebanon, according to press reports.
There has been an almost daily exchange of shelling across the Lebanese-Israeli border between the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, and the Israeli army since the day after the outbreak of war between Israel and the Palestinian movement in the Gaza Strip on October 7.