Hamas Set to Carry Out Executions

Rights groups call on the de facto Gaza government to halt the announced hangings.

A number of Palestinian and international human rights groups have called on Hamas not to go through with over a dozen executions recently announced by senior officials in the de facto government in the Gaza Strip.

The executions would be the first judicially sanctioned ones to be carried out by Hamas since it took over the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup three years ago. While approved, the death sentences have been held up by in-fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza is known to have sentenced a total of 16 people to death, 14 of them in 2009 and two this year. Of the 16 prisoners pending execution, 15 have been convicted of treason in military courts for "collaboration" with Israel, and one was convicted of murder in a civilian court.

While human rights groups have accused the Hamas governments of killing dozens of Palestinians in extrajudicial executions, the Hamas-led government has not carried out a judicially sanctioned execution since the Islamist group took military control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

On March 23, however, the de facto government's Minister of Interior Fathi Hammad told a Gaza radio station that the executions would be carried out soon. Two days later the Gaza government's Attorney General Mohammed Abed announced that earlier this year the General Prosecution Office began ratifying the death sentences of those convicted of treason and murder. Then on Sunday the government's General Prosecution Office announced that it was a legal duty to ratify the pending death sentences.

“Hamas must not start carrying out executions. That would be a profoundly retrograde step and go against the emerging trend towards a worldwide moratorium on executions,” Malcolm Smart, the Middle East Director of Amnesty International said in a statement, adding that there was reason to believe the executions may be carried out in the next few days. “It would be especially abhorrent to execute prisoners who, as in these cases, were sentenced to death after proceedings which failed to meet international fair trial standards.”

Fawzi Barhum, a Hamas spokesperson, said the government was simply following the law.

"Everything is ruled by the basic law," he told The Media Line. "These collaborators killed several Palestinians and committed crimes against civilians. They have been in court several times and Hamas supports the government's implementation of the law, both in the cases of the death penalty and in general, in order to maintain the security and safety of the civilians."

The executions seem to have been held up by the complex inter-factional tensions between the two main Palestinian political parties, Fatah and Hamas.

Since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, the narrow coastal strip has been governed by a de facto administration under Isma’il Haniyeh, while the West Bank has been led by a caretaker government appointed by Palestinian Authority President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian law requires that death sentences be ratified by the President before they are carried out. However, since Abbas' term ended in January, 2009, Hamas has not recognized his legitimacy as president.

"There are many court decisions sentencing people to death, and they could do it, but it might be a little bit difficult for them," Issam Younis, Director of the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza told The Media Line. "The President needs to endorse a death sentence and as you know they do not consider Abbas to be the legitimate elected President, so there is no one with the authority to ratify a death sentence."

The last judicially sanctioned executions in Gaza were carried out in the summer of 2005, prior to the Hamas takeover of the strip, when four men were hanged in Gaza's central prison and one was killed by a firing squad at Gaza's police headquarters.

Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007, Hamas set up a law enforcement and judicial apparatus that has been repeatedly criticized by local and international human rights organizations for lacking accountability mechanisms and trained personnel.

"We do not feel that these people were given a fair trial in these courts for a number of reasons," Bill Van Esveld, a local researcher with Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. "What we hear is that you are not provided access to a lawyer in the military judicial system until after you have been interrogated, so one of many concerns is that evidence can be obtained through coercion. Also, eight or nine of the 16 who have been sentenced to death are Fatah-affiliated, and we haven't seen any Hamas people convicted on the same charges."

"The last time they legally executed anyone was in 2005 and Hamas has never judicially executed anybody," he said. "So this would be a real step backwards."

The Palestinian death penalty is based on the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code of 1979. Palestinian human rights groups have argued that the code is unconstitutional as it was never approved by a democratically elected body, and international human rights groups point to the code's vague wording.

Article 165 of the code, for example, calls for the death penalty for "any crime that incites people or harms the prestige or reputation of the Palestinian revolution."

"How could you defend yourself against such a charge?" said Van Esveld. "Nobody knows what it means."

Late last year the Gaza government adopted an Egyptian law that would permit the execution of convicted drug dealers

"We have the right to hasten the execution of those who are willing to kill their own people," Attorney General Mohammed Abed said of the change in a public statement.

Issam Younis, Director of the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza, argued that Hamas was unlikely to carry out the executions.

"I don't see it happening in the foreseeable future," he told The Media Line. "There is a major international focus on human rights issues in Gaza. In addition, according to the law the President has to ratify a death sentence and so far beyond an interview on the radio we have not seen any formal document or decree from the Gaza government's Ministry of Interior saying they plan to execute someone. So we don't have any real information and I doubt that they will actually go through with it."

Source: The Media Line, April 1, 2010