Swiss justice has been investigating possible financing of Hamas from Switzerland for several weeks, although this organization is not classified as terrorist by Bern, the attorney general indicated on the radio on Saturday. The investigation was opened “a few weeks” before the Hamas attacks on October 7 in Israel, Stefan Blättler told Swiss public radio SRF, without giving further details.
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPC) then clarified to AFP that the investigation focused “on suspicions of financing of Hamas from Switzerland.”
Switzerland has not banned Hamas
But the investigation promises to be delicate because, unlike the EU and the United States, Switzerland has so far not banned Hamas. Since October 7, calls have multiplied in Switzerland for the Federal Council (Government) to take the step, forcing it to address the issue. Four days after the attacks, the Swiss government stated that it “is of the opinion that Hamas should be classified as a terrorist organization.”
It is the “working group on the Middle East”, created after the attacks, that is in charge of studying the options to classify the Islamist organization as terrorist, but the Government has not given any timetable in this regard.
Two days after the attacks, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis argued that the government can only ban organizations that are also banned by the UN. As a result, currently only Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group and some related organizations are banned in Switzerland.
Several attempts in the past
All attempts before Parliament to ban Hamas have so far failed, but a committee in its lower house recently presented a new proposal along these lines.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israeli territory by Hamas men since October 7, most of them civilians riddled with bullets, burned alive or mutilated on the first day of the attack by Palestinian Islamist movement fighters in Gaza. , according to Israeli authorities.
According to the Israeli military, around 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in the Israeli counteroffensive.
In the Gaza Strip, more than 4,300 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in relentless shelling carried out in retaliation by the Israeli army, according to the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza.
Source: BFM TV
