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Since Israel launched its latest war on Gaza, Palestinian activist Mohammad Hannoun has been a figurehead in demonstrations across Italy.
Wrapped in a keffiyeh and waving the national flag, as head of the Palestinian Association in Italy he delivered impassioned speeches condemning the Italian government’s military cooperation with Israel and demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.
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The 63-year-old Jordanian national, who lives in the port city of Genoa and is an architect by profession, was arrested in December, under the accusation of having raised around 7 million euros ($8.1m) through his non-profit Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (ABSPP) that allegedly ended up in Hamas’s coffers.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “appreciation and satisfaction” when the so-called “Operation Domino” led to the arrest of nine people, including Hannoun, described by investigators as the “head of the Italian cell of the Hamas organisation”.
But Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation last month demanded a “comprehensive re-evaluation” of the evidence, describing it as too “generic”, according to the ruling seen by Al Jazeera.
The material presented in court consisted of Israeli intelligence sent to Italian authorities, as well as open-source online information whose provenance and reliability had not been established.
Hannoun’s case is not an isolated one.
Last month, Amin Abu Rashid, a Dutch national of Palestinian origin, was acquitted in the Netherlands by the Rotterdam District Court of financing Hamas, after a years-long legal battle landed him in jail for a year. Similarly, the evidence had relied on Israeli government reports and unverified newspaper articles.
The UK-based advocacy organisation CAGE International described Abu Rashid’s acquittal as a “direct rebuke of the use of Israeli intelligence as the basis for prosecuting Palestinian humanitarian organisers in Europe”.
Anas Mustapha, head of public advocacy at CAGE, told Al Jazeera that relying on Israeli evidence to prosecute Palestinians was tantamount to relying on Chinese information to try Hong Kong dissidents.
This practice constitutes a “major threat to the rule of law in Europe”, he said.
“Israeli intelligence is being laundered through European legal systems to suppress Palestinian civil society,” said Mustapha. “The aim is to disrupt and restrict activism and action against the state of Israel.”
‘Battlefield evidence’
Nicola Canestrini, who is among the lawyers representing the nine defendants including Hannoun, liaised with Abu Rashid’s representatives over the course of several months to challenge the use of so-called “battlefield evidence” in both Italian and Dutch courts.
The term refers to evidence collected by military forces during active hostilities or combat operations. Just like a standard crime scene, the collection of this type of evidence under European requirements must be presented with a chain of custody – the chronological documentation of the seizure, transfer, analysis, and storage of the materials.
In Hannoun’s case, the files alleging cooperation between the ABSPP and Hamas’s military wing were not accompanied by a chain of custody, but sent by an Israeli official “whose personal details remain confidential”, according to court documents.
The only indication of their provenance was the word “Avi”, which Canestrini said was later found to mean Israeli intelligence official Avi Abramson.
The evidence purportedly originated from hard drives found in Gaza’s hospitals as they were taken over by Israeli forces, namely in al-Shifa, al-Rantisi and Jabalia, as well as the Maghazi refugee camp and other locations across the Gaza Strip.
United Nations experts and organisations, including Human Rights Watch, have found that Israeli military actions in Gaza, including the forcible displacement of patients from those hospitals, amount to war crimes.
Canestrini and his legal team argued in court that unverifiable evidence collected by a state undergoing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was inadmissible.
“There’s a short-circuit in the legal system that is very troublesome for the rule of law,” the lawyer told Al Jazeera. “We’re seeing a foreign state under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity bringing evidence forward, and Italian authorities copying and pasting it in their reports.”
Additionally, rather than file an arrest warrant through established international cooperation channels, Israel sent the documents through a “spontaneous information exchange”. That measure bypasses oversight mechanisms established by the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) and the UN Military Evidence Guidelines.
“I believe this was done wilfully to avoid checks and balances that guarantee the respect of human rights,” the lawyer said.
Al Jazeera contacted Italian officials Riccardo Perisi, director of the Service for Combatting Extremism and External Terrorism, and District Attorney Marco Zocco, who declined to comment on Hannoun’s case due to ongoing legal proceedings. Avi Abramson, the Israeli intelligence official identified as the source of the evidence, did not respond to requests for comment.
Crackdown on dissent
Palestinian solidarity has been repressed across Europe since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, with protest bans, police violence and a wave of legal prosecution.
According to the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), an independent organisation offering legal assistance to organisations and individuals advocating for Palestine, European states have systematically deployed “counterterrorism” and “public order” measures against Palestine solidarity efforts.
ELSC found a pattern of repression to “demobilise opposition to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians” in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, “advanced through alliances between state actors, Zionist lobby groups, and arms manufacturers”.
In Italy, activities around Palestinian solidarity are increasingly “equated with terrorism,” Italo Di Sabato, the national coordinator of Osservatorio Repressione (Observatory on Repression), an Italian organisation focused on tracking state control and defending the right to protest, told Al Jazeera.
The observatory documented cases in which pro-Palestinian activists were targeted by lawsuits, searches and administrative sanctions. “The objective is stifling any real form of solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Di Sabato said.
He argued that accepting opaque evidence to be used against Hannoun would have created a dangerous legal precedent.
“Israel’s aim was to have a free zone where everything is permitted,” Di Sabato said. “The political meaning of the Supreme Court of Cassation’s ruling is that the rule of law cannot be suspended when we deal with Palestine.
“What today constitutes the basis for the repression of Palestinian activism could tomorrow be the basis for the repression of any form of dissent.”
