Jerusalem: The severed head and decapitated torso of a 25-year-old Palestinian were discovered on the side of a road in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said, confirming gruesome details of a killing that shocked Palestinian society.
But accounts that the victim, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, was a gay man who feared persecution for his sexuality and had sought asylum in Israel two years ago turned the terrible crime into a socially and politically explosive case.
It was unclear how Abu Murkhiyeh wound up in Hebron, the conservative West Bank city that he had reportedly fled. Palestinian police officials told The Associated Press that Abu Murkhiyeh’s head and torso were found near his family’s house.
Colonel Loay Irzekat, a Palestinian police spokesman, said authorities arrested an acquaintance of Abu Murkhiyeh as a suspect in the killing, but declined to ascribe a motive or elaborate on their relationship pending the investigation.
Palestinian social media was gripped by the grisly killing, but silent on the question of Abu Murkhiyeh’s sexuality. Homosexuality remains deeply taboo in the occupied Palestinian territories, where traditional norms play a prominent role in social and political life.
Still, there was plenty of outrage across the West Bank. Graphic footage taken by Palestinian youths who happened upon Abu Murkhiyeh’s dismembered body on a hillside rippled through WhatsApp groups, provoking shock and horror, before being taken down.
Read the article by Isabel Debre in The Sydney Morening Herald.