Spanish Police Arrest Chinese Hair Salon Owner Accused of Financing Hamas

File image by rokodyl. License under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Spanish police have detained a 38-year-old Chinese national who owned a hair salon near Barcelona on suspicion of financing the militant group Hamas through about 600,000 euros ($714,960) in cryptocurrency transfers, regional police said on Friday.

Investigators traced at least 31 crypto transactions from virtual wallets controlled by the suspect to addresses that are suspected of being linked to an entity used by the Islamist group, whose attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggered a two-year war in the Gaza Strip.

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