GAZA: COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE ISSUES NINTH DEATH SENTENCE IN 2020

September 14, 2020:

The Court of First Instance in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on 18 August 2020 sentenced a 31-year-old man from Rafah to death by hanging after he was convicted of murder in the death of 22-year-old Mahmoud Bashar Ibrahim Al-Hamayda.
Al-Hamayda was pronounced dead at around 2:10pm on 18 August 2018, at the Gaza European Hospital. The deceased was fatally shot in the head in a violent family dispute in Al-Shaboura neighborhood, Rafah.   
Documentation by Al Mezan Center for Human Rights shows that this is the ninth death sentence issued in the Gaza Strip in 2020 and the 22nd since Palestine became a party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which obliges states to abolish the death penalty. In addition, the death penalty was upheld on appeal for six convicted persons.