http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/conte...0/s2854310.htm
Hamas turncoat joins Lateline
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 23/03/2010
Reporter: Leigh Sales
Hamas turncoat joins Lateline
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 23/03/2010
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Hamas is reeling from claims that one of its own insiders has betrayed it by working for Israeli intelligence.
Mossab Hassan Yousef is the son of one of the founders of Hamas. He recently released a memoir and in it claims that after he was arrested by Israeli forces more than a decade ago he rolled over and became a spy for Israel.
Initially he was a double agent with a secret agenda to filter Israeli intelligence back to Hamas.
But over time he was persuaded that Israel should be his sole spymaster and he also eventually converted to Christianity.
Yousef's father has now disowned him and an Al-Qaeda affiliated group has made threats against him.
Yousef has relocated to the United States where he's watched his book Son of Hamas land at number 10 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Mossab Yousef joined me earlier. He asked us not to disclose his whereabouts. The location you see behind him is a generic projection of New York City.
Mossab Yousef, thank you for joining us.
MOSSAB YOUSEF, AUTHOR OF 'SON OF HAMAS': Thank you.
LEIGH SALES: Tell us about your childhood. You grew up in a very religious Muslim family.
MOSSAB YOUSEF: Yes, my childhood wasn't the best. It was really a difficult childhood. I grew up in one of the most difficult environments for a child to grow up, seeing the Israeli aggression and the abuse of power for Palestinian factions.
It wasn't the best environment for a child there to grow up. Of course, I was the child of one of Hamas founders and I grew up like any other Palestinian, but add to that that the Israelis arrested my father for many times and we lost him for many years.
LEIGH SALES: You were arrested by the Israelis when you were 18. What was that for and what happened to you in prison?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: The first time I was arrested when I was 10 years old in fact and the second time I was arrested when I was 18 years old. I was tortured for three years in an underground facility in the West Jerusalem called Muscobia (phonetic spelling).
It's one of the worst interrogation centres in the world and I was there for three months. Later on I was transferred to a normal prison after the interrogation where I met other Hamas members, to find out that Hamas members were torturing Hamas members.
LEIGH SALES: Why were they doing that?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: Israel discovered during that time many of Hamas cells and the Hamas wanted to know who give information for the Israeli intelligence, Shin Bet. So they were interrogating their members and torturing them to get to know who gave information to Israel.
LEIGH SALES: Given that you were tortured by Israelis, what caused you to turn against your upbringing and work for them?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: Yes, I didn't agree to work for the Israelis because I wanted to work for them. It wasn't overnight decision. I decided to work for the Israelis as a double agent working for Hamas in order to infiltrate the Israeli intelligence and attack them from inside.
Now what happened that - I had to face lots of reality about Hamas torture against its own members, and the first meeting with the Israelis I remember that I discovered all people who were tortured in prison, some of them were killed. And others were tortured for long time where not more than their victims.
They didn't have even a relationship with the Israeli Shin Bet. So that was a big shock for me. Beside, I was already shocked that Hamas members were torturing Hamas members. Now to know that all of the victims, they had nothing to do with Israel. So I became curious to know more from intelligence and learn about my people, our problem and the Israeli problem out of curiosity not to help the Israelis.
Later on I end up - which is a few years later, I became on both sides inside the leadership of Hamas and also in Israeli Shin Bet meetings and I had the chance to stop violence, to stop killing, to stop a suicide bomber before he blow himself up in a bus or a school, so I had no choice but to stop blood.
LEIGH SALES: What did you do for Shin Bet? What sort of work?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: You know, I was born in the heart of Hamas leadership and I had a huge network inside the organisation. You can say a social network. And later on I developed and I spread this network to Damascus, to all Hamas leaders in Gaza and the West Bank, even inside prison.
Now, I wasn't a member of Hamas and I wasn't required to be a member of Hamas. I was required to be close enough and my social network inside the movement as the son of one of the founders of the movement and my experience in prison, also from my childhood and being familiar with all type of members of the movement gave me the power to be able to analyse information and solve many puzzles.
So I wasn't a member of Hamas, but I knew about Hamas more than any other member or maybe more than any of Hamas leaders.
LEIGH SALES: In a letter last week your father said that your family had completely renounced you. That must be extremely difficult.
MOSSAB YOUSEF: This is absolutely very disappointing. You know, the god of Islam stole my father from me for many years while my father was doing the will of his god, and today the god of Islam is trying to steal my father from me again by doing his will.
This is not my father's heart. My father doesn't want to disown me because I know that he love me unconditionally. But he's doing his god's will. This is why he disowned me. In fact, it wasn't my father who disowned me, it was the god of Islam who disowned me and he asked his followers to kill me.
LEIGH SALES: You've said that your father is a senior member of Hamas. Does that mean that you think he's a terrorist?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: He is not a terrorist in nature. But being a part of Hamas movement and Hamas leadership, yes, he's a partner in this process and he has a moral responsibility for the killings and I am expecting from him to take a strong stand against violence and try to find the peace for his people and his neighbours.
LEIGH SALES: Your revelations come at a time when Hamas is reeling from suspicions that Hamas informants may have helped Israel assassinate a top Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel. Are you aware of other Hamas insiders working for Israeli intelligence agencies?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: In fact I don't have much to say about this and I am not aware of any other members inside the heart of Hamas leadership because simply I wasn't in touch with any other person inside - within Shin Bet and this is not how intelligence work. But what I can say that the Hamas supposed not to be very surprised if there is infiltration.
The Israeli intelligence, the Israeli Shin Bet could spy on legions of intelligence like CIA and FBI, and they are able to spy on a movement like Hamas and I am sure that Israel has spies inside the movement. I don't know who they are and I don't know what the position they are having.
LEIGH SALES: Were you aware of Israel undertaking missions using fake foreign passports, as was allegedly the case in the Dubai assassination?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: I don't know if Israel for sure I see that there are fingerprints all over the place and I didn't know anything about this operation. What I can say in this position that assassinations are not the way to bring peace to the Jewish state or to the Middle East.
Assassinations will provoke violence. I understand the necessity of intelligence and I've been part of it. When I was working with the Shin Bet I was against killing even a terrorist. It didn't matter to me. Human life is very important and we need to work harder to save human life, even a terrorist life.
We have prisons, we can put them in prisons. I am against assassinations and I think it's not the way for peace.
LEIGH SALES: How do we know that your story about working undercover for Shin Bet all these years is true?
MOSSAB YOUSEF: That's a simply in the book Son of Hamas, when you read the book there are lots of clues and it was confirmed by my ex-Shin Bet handler, which is called Louis, and he talked in details for the Israeli journalist Avi Isseroff. And Avi Isseroff confirmed the story from other sources inside the Shin Bet.
Yes, I know the Shin Bet didn't want to talk about this, but we could confirm the story. And I'm telling you what I wrote in the Son of Hamas, what I mentioned about my role in the Shin Bet is less than 10 per cent of what exactly I did, and soon there will be - other things will be revealed to public.
LEIGH SALES: Mossab Yousef, thank you for making the time to speak to Lateline.
MOSSAB YOUSEF: Thank you very much.
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24-03-2010
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