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Palestinians gathered on Friday around the body of a man identified as Ashraf Ouaida in Gaza City. Photo by Wissam Nassar for The New York Times


By JODI RUDOREN and FARES AKRAM
Published: November 16, 2012

GAZA — Masked gunmen in Gaza killed a man here on Friday as a suspected collaborator with Israel on the third day of its deadly aerial bombardments, shooting him multiple times and leaving his body beneath a billboard featuring a Hamas fighter holding a rocket.

The man the gunmen shot, identified as Ashraf Ouaida, had a poster hung around his neck accusing him of cooperating with the Israelis in the killing of 15 Palestinian leaders.

Wael Mohammed, a taxi driver who was standing on the steps of the Aman Mosque in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, said that around 11:45 a.m. he saw a Jeep pull up on Al Jalla Street, from which two masked men dragged Mr. Ouaida to the dirt circle under the Hamas billboard.

“They took him out from the Jeep with his hands cuffed behind his back, they pushed him under the poster and fired three gunshots at his head from the back,” Mr. Mohammed said. “He was still alive. Then they set his cuffs free and turned him upside down and fired on him again.”

One of the gunmen, Mr. Mohammed said, hung a poster in which Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility and cited Mr. Ouaida’s alleged crimes.

By noon, at least 100 men and boys, some carrying prayer mats, had gathered around Mr. Ouaida’s body, covering his bloodied head with a plastic sheet. He was wearing blue pants and a black zip-up sweatshirt and his feet were bare, and one dusty sandal sat by his hand. Another 15 minutes elapsed before an ambulance took him away.

The brazen nature of the killing suggested that Hamas, which governs Gaza, intended it as a blunt message to other possible collaborators with Israel, which is believed to have an extensive network of informants here as part of its underlying battle with the group. But the shooting evoked mixed feelings.

“There were kids and children on the street,” said the witness, Mr. Mohammed. “They should have executed him in a far place.”

A spokeswoman for the Independent Commission for Human Rights, the Palestinian Authority’s watchdog agency that monitors prosecutions of suspected collaborators with Israel, said the group had no record of Mr. Ouaida having ever been arrested or sentenced to death.

Even if he had been, she noted, such an execution should be carried out by the government after a trial, not handled summarily on the street.

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Hamas failing to probe executions of suspected Israel collaborators, says rights group

The slain men were serving prior jail sentences for passing information to Israel when, Human Rights Watch said, gunmen pulled them from their cells and killed them.

By Reuters | Apr.11, 2013 | 6:33 PM |

Human Rights Watch accused the Islamist Hamas government in the Gaza Strip on Thursday of failing to investigate the summary executions of seven Palestinians alleged to have spied for Israel during a brief war last November.

Ihab al-Ghusain, head of the Hamas government media office, denied the allegation and said an inquiry headed by the prosecutor general was set up shortly after the incidents and had made recommendations to the cabinet. He did not elaborate.

The slain men were serving prior jail sentences for passing information to Israel when, HRW said, gunmen pulled them from their cells and killed them. Some of their corpses were dragged in Gaza's streets by motorcycles to chants of "God is Great."

One of the men was killed on Nov. 16 and his body was left for the public to see on a busy street. The other six were killed and mutilated four days later.

Following the incidents, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk called the killings "unlawful" and said the perpetrators "should be punished and it must not be repeated."

Human Rights Watch said their convictions may have been based on evidence extracted through torture, and that an inquiry into their deaths pledged by Hamas seems not to have begun.

"Hamas's inability or unwillingness to investigate the brazen murders of seven men makes a mockery of its claims that it's upholding the rule of law in Gaza," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for the New York-based HRW.

"Even before the killings, the abuses the men suffered made the criminal justice system a travesty, regardless of their guilt or innocence," she said.

Hamas and other militant groups were at the time fighting an eight-day conflict with Israel in which six Israelis, two of them soldiers, and 175 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed. Human Rights Watch and other groups faulted both Gaza fighters and the Israeli military for causing civilian deaths.

Hamas accused HRW of being "unprofessional," contacting them only a day before their report was published and not focusing enough on Israel. "(HRW) should pay more attention to crimes by the (Israeli) occupation and the killing of hundreds of Palestinians with no mercy," Ghusain told Reuters.

Israel regularly employs Palestinian agents to scope out targets and militant personnel for air strikes, which often kill civilians. Collaboration with Israel is generally reviled by Palestinians, who regard suspected spies as traitors to their people and ostracize their entire families.

On March 12, Hamas authorities launched a month-long campaign calling for collaborators with Israel to turn themselves in to authorities in exchange for amnesty.

The ultimatum expired on Thursday and the Hamas interior ministry said that in the coming hours security forces would arrest a number of spies whom they say failed to surrender.