By Inna Lazareva, Tel Aviv
Hamas forces carried out harrowing extrajudicial killings, abductions and arrests of Palestinians in Gaza during last summer’s war with Israel, according to a new report by Amnesty International which also details violent interrogations that took place inside the grounds of the largest hospital in the coastal enclave.
The report, entitled "Strangling Necks: Abduction, torture and summary killings of Palestinians by Hamas forces during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict" also details the executions of at least 23 Palestinians, some of whom were accused of acting as “Israeli collaborators” in the 2014 conflict, despite the fact that many of them were in prison even before the war broke out.
“There were marks of torture and bullet shots on his body”, the brother of Atta Najjar was quoted as saying in the report. Atta was an ex-Palestinian Authority policeman serving a 15 year sentence since 2009 for alleged “collaboration” with Israel when he was tortured and killed in August 2014.
A picture showing a man referred to as A.R. after he was released from prison with the marks of torture plainly visible on his body.
“His arms and legs were broken … his body was as if you’d put it in a bag and smashed it ... His body was riddled with about 30 bullets. He had slaughter marks around his neck, marks of knives … And from behind the head - there was no brain. Empty… It was difficult for us to carry him … He was heavy, like when you put meat in a bag; no bones. His bones were smashed. They broke him in the prison.”, his brother said.
On one day alone - 22nd August 2014 - at least 17 extrajudicial executions were carried out, notes the report, in the crackdown following Israeli airstrikes which killed three Hamas commanders. This included 11 inmates from Katiba prison who were executed despite the fact that they all had either pending appeals or undergoing military trials.
Hamas’s actions are “spine-chilling” and “in some cases amount to war crimes”, said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.
“In the chaos of the conflict, the de facto Hamas administration granted its security forces free rein to carry out horrific abuses including against people in its custody”.
Part of the Amnesty International report
On one day alone - 22nd August 2014 - at least 17 extrajudicial executions were carried out, notes the report, in the crackdown following Israeli airstrikes which killed three Hamas commanders. This included 11 inmates from Katiba prison who were executed despite the fact that they all had either pending appeals or undergoing military trials.
Hamas’s actions are “spine-chilling” and “in some cases amount to war crimes”, said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.
“In the chaos of the conflict, the de facto Hamas administration granted its security forces free rein to carry out horrific abuses including against people in its custody”.
Part of the Amnesty International report
The abandoned areas of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City “ including the outpatients’ clinic area”, were used “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre”, the report also notes.
One 43-year old Fatah activist, identified only as ‘A.H.’ for protection, described being tortured for about two hours at the hospital’s outpatients wing, hands tied behind his back, blindfolded and beaten with hammer and plastic pipes.
“Suddenly I felt my whole body being hit, this time with sharp objects, which led to fractures to both my hands. They also used the sharp objects on my legs, I don’t know what they were as I was still blindfolded. Those objects caused holes of about one centimetre in both my feet.”, AH said.
At the end, his phone was thrown back to him with the words: “Here is your mobile and here is a message to relay to the intelligence service in Ramallah.”
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