Gaza’s Hamas authorities have executed five Palestinian men convicted in separate cases of murder and alleged collaboration with Israel.
The interior ministry says the executions on Sunday meant “to achieve public deterrence and security”, but rights groups in the past have questioned fair-trial standards in the military and civilian courts of the Islamic militant group.
Two of the men, both members of the Palestinian security forces, were killed by firing squad, and the other three were hanged at dawn at a security site in Gaza City.
The executions were the first since Hamas executed three Gazans who were put to death in a hasty trial of killing a leader of the group in 2017.
Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 after fierce clashes with forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
It has issued 180 death sentences and followed through on 33 of them “without the ratification of the Palestinian President in violation of Palestinian law,” according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The Palestinian Authority, based in and exerting limited self rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, signed onto international treaties banning capital punishment in 2018.
Two of those put to death, aged 44 and 54, were charged with collaborating with Israel and providing it with information that aided the Israeli military in striking targets in Gaza, the ministry said.
Read the article by Fares Akram in The Canberra Times.