The Ministry of the Interior announced that the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, on Sunday announced the execution of 5 Palestinians, including 2 of them for collaboration with the Israeli occupation.
The executions were carried out by the authorities at dawn, by the hanging and firing squad.
Hamas said in a statement, “The death sentence was carried out against two defendants accused of collaborating with Israel and three others in criminal cases.”
The statement added that the accused were “granted their full right to defend themselves, according to the litigation procedures before a local court”.
According to Shehab News Agency, Hamas Interior Ministry provided the initials and birth years of the five executed Palestinians but did not reveal their full names. The two men executed for collaboration with Israel were born in 1978 and 1968.
The execution of the ruling was as follows
- Regarding the first execution by firing squad, the 54-year-old oldest man, a resident of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, as per Hamas was convicted of providing Israel in 1991 “information about the resistance fighters, their place of residence and the location of the rocket launchers.”
- As for the second man executed by hanging, the 44-year-old was convicted of providing Israel in 2001 with intelligence information that led to the targeting and killing of civilians by the Israeli forces.
- The third man executed by hanging, a 43-year-old from Gaza City, has been imprisoned since 2004 on charges of kidnapping and killing a female citizen, then escaping from prison and committing another crime of killing a citizen, coupled with the felony of kidnapping and robbery in 2009.
- The fourth executed by hanging, a 30-year-old resident of the northern Gaza Strip, was arrested on October 30, 2013, on charges of intentionally murdering for the motive of robbery against a citizen.
- The fifth man executed by the firing squad, a 26-year-old, from the northern Gaza Strip, was arrested on July 14, 2022, for murdering a man and a girl and injuring 11 others during a family quarrel. The man was said to be a member of the Hamas security forces.
The decision received wide support from the Palestinian public, citizens and officials, and they called social networking sites the hashtag #Retribution_Life, confirming that the implementation of the ruling is a step in the right direction.
Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center For Human Rights said that since the beginning of this year, 15 Palestinians were sentenced to death by Hamas.
According to human rights groups, since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, its courts have sentenced dozens of Palestinians to death and have executed 27 of them so far.
