Israel Matzav

US consulate being sued by employee fired for Hamas ties

This is rich. The US consulate in Jerusalem is being sued by a former employee who was discharged because he had ties to Hamas.

The plaintiff is Azam Qiq, who worked at the diplomatic mission until 2006 as a mechanic. His father was Hassan Qiq, the former head of Hamas in Jerusalem, who died in 2006.

Azam Qiq was hired by the consulate in 2003 and underwent a background check by its security teams. According to court documents obtained by The Jerusalem Post, during his hiring interview, Qiq said he had never been arrested or interrogated by the Israeli police.

For the next three years, Qiq worked in the consulate motor pool and was a good employee. He even received two awards from then counsel-general Jacob Walles for his exemplary service.

That changed in February 2006, when his father, Hassan, passed away. According to the consulate's response to the lawsuit, filed with the Jerusalem Labor Court, senior Hamas officials attended Hassan's funeral, which was lined with Hamas flags.

Six months later, the consulate learned of Qiq's father's identity. Attached to the consulate's response to the lawsuit was a flyer Hamas put out after Hassan's death.

"Believers of God and the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas consider as a grand master, teacher and educator Prof. Hassan Suleiman Qiq, member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and a member of the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas," the flyer read.

Hassan Qiq was known by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and was part of the focus of an investigation that brought down Hamas's Jerusalem branch and ended in 2007.

A month later, Azam Qiq was arrested in the middle of the night by the Shin Bet and was accused of hiding a suitcase with documents pertaining to Hamas finances in his house. His brother Ziad, who was an adviser to the Hamas minister in charge of Jerusalem, was also arrested at the time. According to the court documents, Azam Qiq confessed to having stored the suitcase in his home.

The consulate also later discovered that he had been arrested twice previously - once for throwing stones in 1988 and another time for joining an illegal organization in 1989, for which he served a month in administrative detention.

Qiq was fired by the consulate in September 2006.

Those Americans, they're experts on finding terrorists, aren't they? Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:31 AM