The European Union’s law enforcement agency said it has been “in contact” with the anti-Israel lawfare outfit Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the NGO Monitor watchdog group revealed on Monday.

Europol used the term “stakeholder” to describe HRF, which is headed by a man who claims to have fought for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and which has lodged disputed war crimes charges against Israelis abroad.  

The Europol statement came in reply to an NGO Monitor query sent to the agency last week regarding an HRF member’s comment last month that “recently… we have begun working closely with Europol to assist with war crimes investigations across the European Union.”

NGO Monitor President Gerald Steinberg warned that Europol’s contact with HRF erodes the agency’s status.    

“Any reliance by Europol on accusations made by a terror-linked NGO propaganda front undermines Europol’s credibility in terms of law enforcement,” Steinberg told JNS. ”Imagine police intelligence officers cooperating with Mafia godfathers to coordinate strategy on organized crime.”

In the Europol reply, a spokesperson wrote to NGO Monitor: “While Europol has also been in contact with the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the Agency takes necessary due diligence steps when engaging with such stakeholders.” Interpol, she added, “is maintaining and exploring cooperation with a number of stakeholders, including civil society organisations that collect and document alleged war crimes around the world.”

When soldiers leave Israel, HRF targets them for prosecution for “war crimes” in their destination countries. It has filed complaints in Ecuador, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Argentina, Sri Lanka, France, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Thailand and the United Kingdom. It has not secured an indictment, but several probes were launched against Israelis, sometimes requiring the investigated Israelis to leave the country where the probe was launched.

Israel and Israelis are facing war crimes and genocide investigations at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. Israel and the United States have denied the genocide allegations outright. Israel has said it investigates alleged war crimes internally and punishes troops for any infraction.

HRF was founded in 2023 by Dyab Abou Jahjah, who has admitted lying to obtain Belgian citizenship. He also admitted in a 2003 interview with The New York Times to having had “some military training,” presumably with Hezbollah.

Before starting HRF, Abou Jahjah created the Arab European League, a radical Muslim advocacy group.

In 2006, the group posted a cartoon on its website showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, implying Jews fabricated the Holocaust. A Dutch appeals court in 2010 fined the group for hate speech and ordered the removal of the cartoon.

Abou Jahjah has been accused of espousing antisemitic views.

In 2015, he called then-Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever, now Belgium’s prime minister, “a Zionist c**ksucker.” In 2009, he wrote three times on Facebook that Jews in Israel “can leave with a suitcase or in a coffin,” according to the Jewish newspaper Joods Actueel. He first claimed the screenshots were fake, then said his account had been hacked.

In March, the HRF member who boasted about working with Europol, Jacob Romm, tweeted that Houthi terrorists in Yemen are “the only group in the world that is treating the Genocide Convention and the principle of the Responsibility to Protect with sufficient respect,” adding that the fact that “they are a designated ‘terror’ group by the US should tell you something about the structure of international law.”

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