(March 2, 2023 / JNS) Humza Yousaf, the favorite to become Scotland’s first minister, met with a former senior Hamas commander, the U.K’s Jewish Chronicle reported Thursday.

Yousaf, 37, currently Scottish health secretary for the Scottish National Party, arranged the high-level meeting with Hamas leader Mohammad Sawalha, whose nom de guerre is Abu Obada.

Yousaf, then 22, was working as a parliamentary assistant for Scotland’s first Muslim Scottish member of Parliament, Bashir Ahmad. At the same time, Yousef, along with his cousin Osama Saeed, was running the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF).

Sawalha’s history was public knowledge, the Jewish news site reported. The BBC in 2006 identified him as having “masterminded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy.”

Before emigrating to the U.K., Sawalha was Hamas’s “military” chief in Judea and Samaria.