GAZA CITY: Israel was accused on Tuesday of perpetrating a miscarriage of justice after a court sentenced the Gaza head of a US aid agency to 12 years in prison on charges of funding Hamas.

Mohammed Al-Halabi, 44, has been in jail since he was arrested in June 2016, and most of the evidence in his six-year trial was kept secret over what Israel described as “security concerns.”

The Beersheba district court in southern Israel ruled in June that Al-Halabi used his position as Gaza chief of World Vision to funnel millions of dollars and tons of steel to the militant group that controls the Palestinian enclave. On Tuesday the court sentenced him to “12 years’ prison time, less the detention already served.”

World Vision’s response to the sentencing in Mohammad El Halabi’s case: https://t.co/kmzCEtz8dI pic.twitter.com/Dz3woiD7td

— World Vision (@WorldVision) August 30, 2022

Al-Halabi will appeal to the Supreme Court, his lawyer Maher Hanna said. “He says that he’s innocent, he did nothing and there is no evidence,” the lawyer said.

Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch said the 12-year sentence was a “profound miscarriage of justice,” and the six-year trial and use of secret evidence made a “mockery of due process.”

World Vision said the sentence was “deeply disappointing.” Its spokesperson Sharon Marshall said the agency opposed “any form of terrorism or activities that support terrorism” but “we don’t see any evidence of those things in this case.”