Marzook, Mousa Mohammed Abu (1951–)

The Hamas political leader Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook lived in the United States for more than a decade before an Israeli warrant for his arrest led to his being taken into custody in 1995. Amid much controversy, he was held by the U.S. government for several years without being charged. He was finally deported to Jordan in 1997.

Marzook was born in a Gaza refugee camp and studied at Helwan College of Engineering and Technology in Cairo. He traveled to the United States in the early 1980s and earned a master's degree in industrial engineering at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. in engineering from Columbia State University in Louisiana in 1991.

Marzook apparently first joined the Palestinian militant group Hamas in 1992, when he became head of the organization's political bureau. Soon after, Marzook moved to a suburban neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C., with his wife and family. Four of his six children were born in the United States.

In 1995, Marzook was detained at New York's Kennedy Airport after returning from the Middle East. His name had been added to a list of suspected terrorists after Israel issued a warrant for his arrest for conspiracy to kill Israeli citizens. Israeli officials said that hundreds of thousands of dollars were transferred from Marzook's account into the bank account of a Chicago auto dealer, Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, who was later arrested in Israel for distributing money to the military wing of Hamas. Israel called for Marzook's extradition, saying he was tied to 10 violent Hamas attacks between 1990 and 1994.

Marzook admitted to leading Hamas's political bureau, but he maintained that Hamas keeps political and military functions separate. He repeatedly denied any involvement with Hamas's military wing and compared himself to Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the Irish Republican Army. For nearly two years, U.S. authorities held Marzook in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City without charging him with a crime. Marzook first appealed the Israeli extradition request, but he waived his right to an extradition hearing in January 1997, saying he had lost faith in the U.S. justice system. However, Israel dropped the request for Marzook's extradition in April 1997, saying that trying Marzook in Israel would provoke further violence. The following month the United States deported Marzook to Amman, Jordan. He was rearrested in Jordan but soon left the country and moved to Damascus, Syria, where he continued to serve as a deputy of the Hamas political bureau in that country.

In 2004 Marzook was indicted by the United States on racketeering charges, accused of “playing a substantial role in financing and supporting international terrorism.” Two other men, Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah of Chicago were arrested and indicted on the same charges. Ashqar and Salah pled not guilty, and in [Page 377]February 2007 they were found innocent of the racketeering charges but convicted on lesser charges involving obstruction of justice and criminal contempt. As of 2010, Marzook was still a deputy with Hamas, periodically offering the group's perspective on current events to Western newspapers.

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