An insight into Hamas weapons smuggling networks to Gaza: how a cell in Libya with connections in Turkey and Serbia sought to smuggle antiaircrafy missiles to Gaza, and how it all backfired https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/marwan-alashqar-hamas-envoy-to-libya-attempted-to-smuggle-missiles-into-gaza-thclb0t68

The Palestinian militant group Hamas used the chaos of Libya’s civil war to set up an arms-smuggling group that tried to funnel anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to Gaza, documents shown to The Times reveal.

The group, set up by Marwan alAshqar, the Hamas envoy to Libya, was given the job of diverting arms intended for Libyan battlefields through Egypt and used middlemen and Hamas militants in Turkey and Qatar to circumvent an Israeli blockade on Gaza.

Communications involved quite the convoluted tradecraft:

Requests from the Hamas leadership would arrive in encrypted emails using codewords for weapons, according to judicial files. A “jacuzzi” meant a heat-seeking missile and “elephant hunting” referred to anti-tank missiles

Ashqar would reply using messages inserted into the text of ebooks, which were then encrypted and emailed to his superiors.

That didn't forestall their arrest. Interior ministry forces grew suspicious of all the armed man coming to and fro from their Tripoli office. They were arrested and in 2018 sentenced to a decade.

When asked to procure more sophisticated equipment, such as American anti-aircraft Stinger missiles and Russian anti-tank Kornets, he allegedly enlisted a senior Hamas military man identified as Allam Bilal, who lived between Qatar and Turkey and allegedly led procurement efforts

In 2013 Bilal set up a meeting with a trusted arms dealer in Turkey named Abu Mohammed, according to the documents. He found them a supplier in Serbia but the deal eventually fell through. It was not clear whether Hamas managed to acquire the missiles after this attempt.

Other weapons made it to Gaza from Libya, via smugglers who received them at the border near Siwa.

Ashqar said that after Egyptian then military chief Abdelfattah al-Sisi took power in 2013, smuggling became much more difficult with the destruction of tunnels and heightened security.