Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip

GAZA: HAMAS SENTENCES MAN TO DEATH FOR SPYING FOR ISRAEL

March 24, 2013: Gaza’s Hamas rulers have sentenced a man to death for collaborating with Israel.
A statement on Sunday (March 24) by Gaza’s Interior Ministry, translated by Arab affairs expert Dalit Halevi, had said that a military court had sentenced the man to death by strangulation. He was, according to the statement, convicted of providing information to “hostile elements” in Israel.
Badr al-Din Badr, head of the communications department of the Interior Ministry, said in the statement that the agent who was sentenced to death was arrested quite some time ago by security forces, and had failed to turn himself in as part of two previous campaigns that allowed agents to turn themselves into the government and be pardoned under certain conditions.
Earlier this month, Hamas rulers in Gaza launched a month-long campaign urging alleged Arab "collaborators" with Israel to turn themselves in as a means of being granted leniency.
"We announce the opening of the door to repentance for remaining collaborators and for all those who have fallen into the traps set by the enemy's intelligence services," interior ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan told reporters on March 12.
"We urge them to return to the bosom of their people and their families," he said, noting that the offer of clemency was open until April 11.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) released a statement on March 24, in which it confirmed that a man named F.A.A. was sentenced to death after being convicted of spying in favor of an enemy entity.
The organization noted that this sentence is the first of its kind in 2013. The number of death sentences issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA) since its establishment in 1994 is 132, including 106 death sentences issued in Gaza and 26 in the PA-assigned areas of Judea and Samaria, the organization said. 46 of these death sentences have been issued since 2007.
In November, during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, the Hamas government executed seven such collaborators without trial.
Six of the seven were publicly executed, with witnesses saying the men were pushed from a vehicle and shot. Pictures from Gaza showed the body of one of the men being dragged behind a motorcycle.
Hamas was publicly condemned for the summary executions, and its political bureau issued an official apology.
The terror group later announced it would establish a committee that will investigate the circumstances surrounding the execution of the seven. (Sources: israelnationalnews.com, 25/03/2013)