Palestinian sentenced to death for giving info to Israel

Gaza City: A Hamas military court in the Gaza Strip today sentenced a Palestinian to death for allegedly providing information to Israel said to have led to Palestinians being killed, judicial sources said.

The 28-year-old man was identified only by the initials N.A. And no other details on the accusations against him were provided by Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Palestinian territory which has seen three wars with Israel in six years.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 157 people have been sentenced to death in the occupied territories since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

Thirty-two have been executed, including 30 in the Gaza Strip.
All execution orders must in theory be approved by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognises his legitimacy.

In Gaza, beyond death sentences handed out by courts, Hamas has also carried out summary executions for collaborating with Israel, sometimes in public places.

The most prominent occurred during last summer's 50-day war between Palestinian militants in the territory and Israel, when a firing squad of men in uniforms from Hamas' armed wing shot dead six people in front of Gaza City's main mosque.

Under Palestinian law, collaborators, murderers and drug traffickers risk death sentences.