An alleged Palestinian gunman who called for the slaughter of Jews has pleaded guilty to attempting to enter the UK illegally.
Appearing before Canterbury Crown Court, Abu Wadee, also known as Mosab Abdulkarim Al-Gassas, admitted trying to get into the country across the Channel on a boat on March 6 without leave or valid entry clearance.
Wadee, 33, was a member of a militant group that called for the slaughter of all Jews and posed with AK-47s. He triggered a security scare after he posted a video of himself flicking a V-for-victory sign at the front of a boat packed with migrants in orange lifejackets.
He was arrested by immigration enforcement officers after arriving on the small boat in Kent, having paid smugglers €1,500 (£1,300), the court had been previously told. He was then placed in a hotel in the Manchester area.
The court was told that Wadee, who left Gaza in 2022 before making asylum claims in Greece, Germany and Belgium, had no family or financial ties to the UK and had stayed between Calais and Dunkirk in France for about seven days before making the crossing.
Alleged militant has 170,000 TikTok followers
His arrival in the UK made headlines after it emerged that he had posted support for Hamas and hate speech calling for the death of Jews on social media.
Wadee, from the city of Khan Younis, posted a video on his Facebook page last September in which he was seen calling for Allah to “punish [Jews] completely.”
In another picture, posted on Facebook in March 2021, it is claimed Wadee stared into the camera while smoking a cigarette and brandishing an assault rifle with a telescopic sight.
The alleged militant has 170,000 TikTok followers. He also has a YouTube channel followed by 189,000 subscribers, which collects money via PayPal. A video of him throwing pipe bombs was posted on his Facebook page in June 2021.
The Telegraph also obtained footage of Wadee throwing two pipe bombs during night clashes with Israeli forces in the desert in 2021.
‘A minor celebrity in Gaza’
Joe Truzman, a terrorism expert and the editor of the Long War Journal, who has tracked Wadee for more than seven years, said the Palestinian was affiliated with terror groups in Gaza. Pictures showed him with Mustafa al-Zaqout, aka Abu Suheib, the leader of a Hamas-aligned terror group called the Al-Qadir al-Husseini Brigades.
Wadee came to prominence in 2018 when there were riots and demonstrations on the border with Israel. Mr Truzman aid he was a part of a group or “unit” made up of young men, organised by terror groups who would foment violence at the Gaza-Israel border.
“He is lucky he wasn’t killed. These units would set fires and throw IEDs at Israeli soldiers during clashes at the border. There is evidence of Abu Wadee holding a pipe bomb,” said Mr Truzman. “The protests were called the Great March of Return, and lasted from 2018 to 2022.
“Abu Wadee was openly part of these clashes, and he posted a lot of what he did on Facebook. During this period, he became a minor celebrity in Gaza. He describes himself as a revolutionary for the Palestinian cause.”