Mohammad El Halabi (photographed above) was arrested by Israel on June 15 while crossing the border into Gaza, World Vision said in a statement. He was charged by Israeli authorities on Thursday.

He had run the organization's Gaza operations since 2010.

According to Israel's Shin Bet security service, El Halabi diverted around $7.2 million of World Vision money to Hamas each year. That is the equivalent of 60 percent of the charity's total annual funding for Gaza.

Some 40 percent of the funds aimed at civilian projects — some $1.5 million a year — were "given in cash" to Hamas combat units, according to a statement issued by the Shin Bet.

Some of the money raised to support injured children in the enclave had been diverted to Hamas families by "fraudulently listing their children as wounded," according to the agency.

"Money designated for psychological support, education and health in Gaza ... was used to pay the families of Hamas terrorists," it added.

A lawyer appointed by World Vision to represent El Halabi told NBC News that his client denied the charges against him.

"He told me he never, ever transferred any money to Hamas and he has never been a Hamas member," Muhamad Mahmud said.

Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai called the case a "grave incident."

He called on World Vision — which has operated in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank since 1975 — to "assume responsibility and set your house in order."

Australia and Germany have suspended funding to the World Vision Evangelical Christian humanitarian aid group in response to Israeli allegations that its Gaza office had siphoned $7.2 million a year to Hamas.

Source

• The Jerusalem Post
• NBC News
• Image: Israelseen.com

His mother used to make him wear that sweater on special occasions.

It was their Othman, who turned 18 on Monday but at the time was 5. None of his relatives recalled signing him up for the World Vision program — nor receiving any money.

"We want to know: Who took the photo? What was their aim?" asked Othman's uncle Abdul-Hamid Sabateen, a chicken farmer in Husan, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

I had come to Husan to find Othman after a chance meeting with an Australian police officer months before.

I was lost in Sydney's airport, and he helped me find the departure gate.

On the way, I mentioned my work as a journalist in the Middle East, and the officer — who is 44 and spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name, Brendan, because of his work — said he had been interested in the Palestinian cause since he was a teenager.

Brendan told me that in 2003 he had signed up to "sponsor" Othman through World Vision, a Christian charity whose website highlights faces and biographies of children from impoverished places around the world, saying that $39 a month can "change a child's world for good."

Over the next five years, Brendan said, he sent at least $1,100, along with Christmas and Easter cards, photographs and letters for Othman.

He never got any response from the boy, and always wondered what had become of him.

He did not know Othman's last name, but remembered that he was from Husan, a village of about 7000. Read more