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Numerous members of a hateful anti-Islam biker gang that promotes violence against Muslims are serving as military contractors at the deadly U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites, with many of them in leadership positions, a new investigation finds.
At least 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club are working in Gaza for contractor UG Solutions, BBC revealed. Seven of them are in leadership positions overseeing the sites, according to the report. One former contractor has estimated at least 40 of the 320 people, or one in eight, hired for GHF sites by UG Solutions are members of the gang.
The Infidels are a group founded by American Iraq War veterans in 2006. Members “see themselves as modern Crusaders,” BBC wrote, apparently ready to wage a religious war against Muslims. The group’s Facebook has numerous Islamophobic posts, and one event page from the group showed it previously hosted a pig roast during Ramadan “in defiance of” Islam.
“We neither support nor tolerate the Jihadist movement and those who support it. If on the other hand you do support the country’s efforts against Islamic extremism, then support your local Infidels MC!” the group said in a Facebook post, as reported by The Intercept.
Florida Infidels member Johnny “Taz” Mulford is the leader of the UG Solutions’s contract in Gaza, sources have said. In May, just before GHF first opened its sites in Gaza, Mulford was recruiting people to join him, seeking people who “have a combat arms [military occupational specialty], [and] can still shoot, move and communicate.”
BBC was able to uncover the identities of other Infidels members involved in GHF when Mulford errantly included BBC reporters in a “reply all” to a request for comment to other members. The email instructed them not to reply to reporters.
Some of those involved are not only leaders at GHF sites, but also leaders of the gang, the report found. Larry “J-Rod” Jarrett reportedly leads logistics for GHF, and is the Infidels’s vice president; Bill “Saint” Siebe is a security team leader for one of the GHF sites, and is the gang’s national treasurer; and Richard “A-Tracker” Lofton is another GHF team leader, and is, BBC reports, a founding member of the gang.
UG Solutions, a North Carolina-based contractor, is providing armed “security” at the GHF sites, near which over 1,300 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed in Israeli massacres.
When asked about the apparent gang members, UG Solutions says it doesn’t rule people out for “personal hobbies or affiliations unrelated to job performance.” GHF said it maintains a “zero-tolerance policy for any hateful, discriminatory biases or conduct.”
Mulford’s involvement was first reported by Zeteo. He has several tattoos seemingly referencing the Crusades, including one that reads “1095,” an apparent reference to the first Crusade, launched by the pope at the time. BBC reports that the Infidels Facebook page sells hats with the year on it, touting it as “a military campaign by western European forces to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control.”
“When you see anti-Muslim bigots today celebrating 1095, celebrating the Crusades, they are celebrating the wholesale massacre of Muslims — the erasure of Muslims and Jews from the holy city of Jerusalem,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told BBC.
“If I went into Israel with a Nazi swastika on my arm and said ‘Heil Hitler,’ what would people think of me?” said Anthony Aguilar, a former UG Solutions contractor-turned whistleblower, to The Intercept last month. “They’re in a primary Arab Muslim population, delivering food at the end of the gun.”
One contractor overseeing site security, Josh Miller, posted a photo on Facebook showing contractors in Gaza carrying a banner that says “Make Gaza Great Again.” Behind the group is a sign that says “FOB [Forward Military Base] Mar-a-Lago.”
A logo on the banner belongs to a website selling clothing with slogans like “embrace violence,” BBC found. Another one shows a cartoon of a U.S. military vest-wearing skeleton surfing in front of the Gaza skyline with a mushroom cloud rising from it. That shirt says “Surf all day, rockets all night” and “Gaza summer 25.”
CAIR has renewed its call for GHF to be removed from Gaza in response to BBC’s report.
“These GHF mercenaries have a history of extremely violent rhetoric against Muslims and denigrating various aspects of Islam,” CAIR national director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “They should have no place in Gaza. Neither should the GHF, which must be investigated and prosecuted for its alleged crimes against humanity.”
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