Assassin's aid: British taxpayers' cash given to group accused of helping Middle East death squads [View all]

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EXCLUSIVE: The Foreign Office has given £227,988 to B’Tselem

BRITISH AID was paid to left-wing activists in the Middle East accused of helping death squads torture and kill Palestinians, The Sun can reveal. The Foreign Office were under fire last night after giving £227,988 of taxpayers’ cash to the B’Tselem group – who are accused by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of sending “innocents” to “torture and execution”.

An activist from the “human rights group” was exposed for helping the Palestinian Authority’s secret police detain, beat up and even kill Palestinians caught selling land to Israeli Jews.

But last night the British government came under attack for funding the group who are at the centre of a political storm in Israel following an TV exposé of their activities. Secret footage of B’Tselem employee Nasser Nawaja and another activist Ezra Nawi was broadcast last week by Israel’s Uvda programme. In the explosive film, Nawi boasted he would send “pictures and phone numbers” of Palestinians who sold land to Israelis “to the Palestinian security services,” who “catch these guys and they kill them”. Chillingly, he added: “But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”

...B’Tselem said they are opposed to “any torture or execution” however argued grassing Palestinian land sellers was the “only legitimate course of action”. B’Tselem’s financial records show that since 2010, they have been in receipt of more £227,988 in British aid. The controversial cash came from the Global Conflict Prevention Pool, which is jointly managed by the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence. Grants were given for “supporting video projects”, but last night the Foreign Office insisted they had stopped in 2013. Parliamentary records show the funding dating back as far as 2006. The group has also received more than £300,000 from the European Union in the last three years.


http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6872584/Assassins-aid.html