Gaza City – The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip hanged a father and son at dawn Tuesday for collaborating with Israel, a government spokesman said.
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The two were found guilty of helping Israel target a top Hamas leader and identify other militants who were later killed by Israeli forces, said Ihab Ghussein, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza.
They were arrested in 2003 and charged a year later, and had exhausted all legal means to appeal the sentence, he said.
He would not provide their names, but the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights identified them as 51-year-old Mahmoud Abu Qenas and his 22-year-old son, Rami Abu Qenas.
The family of the two men executed Tuesday burned tires and tried to shut down a Gaza City road in response to the deaths. Family members were quickly pushed back into their homes by Hamas police who also shooed away journalists and told them not to take photos.
In a statement, the human rights group condemned the hangings, saying the Palestinian judicial process was so flawed that it would have not been possible to conclusively prove the two men were involved in spying.
The deaths brought to five the number of Palestinians executed by Hamas for spying since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007. Another seventeen alleged informers were killed in vigilante-style shootings by Palestinians during the three-week Israeli offensive in Gaza that ended in January 2009. Some were on death row or awaiting trial by Hamas.
Collaborators are loathed by Palestinian society at large and vigilante killings of suspected informers have been common in the Palestinian territories for decades.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the men were accused of involvement in a 2003 assassination attempt against Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas co-founder.
Israel killed Rantisi in 2004. The two men executed Tuesday were already jailed by then.
israel should publish a list of all their agents in gaza and let hamas handle the job you can start with several of the heads of hamas and their cohorts.
Let’s see how quick the response of all human rights groups will be, now that the issue is not Israel!
Please everybody sit back! let the Hamas jihad muhajedeen “peace lovers” do their job in bringing pieces – sorry, “peace” in the middle east..
Where are all the Free Gaza Peace Activists??? Why didn’t they make it their business to get to Gaza through Egypt, to protest and pressure hamas on this henious act. Why weren’t their thousands of them flooding gaza with letters of support, why aren’t they helping these poor families. The answer is rather simple, they have no interest in freeing gaza, they’re only interest is freeing the world of israel and jews. As long as they can go after israel or jews, they will take up any mantra or calling. ANYTHING to be able to go after israel and the jews.
” … the Palestinian judicial process was so flawed that it would have not been possible to conclusively prove the two men were involved in spying.”
That reminds me of another potentially flawed judicial process that we are already all too familiar with: the chances of Levi Aron getting a fair trial anywhere in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut.
The problem is that it will be almost impossible to form a completely unprejudiced jury. No Jew will be able, in all good conscience, to try this case. Because of this, the trial will have to be held somewhere else in the country.
#5 True, the prosecution will have to ask for a change of venue – but why are you sticking up for Levi Aron (ym”sh)?
Where is the international outcry from the moral leaders of the world the UN?
Not sure what’s so surprising here. We are their mortal enemy. It is normal and natural for a country to execute men who collaborate with their enemies. And if such collaboration resulted in people being killed, any well-adjusted society MUST put such collaborators to death.
There is an American serving the life sentence for collaborating an ally, a misdeed which, as near as I can tell, did not result in any loss of life,
According to the article, the two men were arrested in 2003 and “the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights identified them as 51-year-old Mahmoud Abu Qenas and his 22-year-old son, Rami Abu Qenas.”
If this is correct, the 22-year-old who was killed was arrested when he was just 14?!