Gaza’s Hamas government on July 26 executed a Palestinian father and son convicted of spying for Israel. The two were found guilty of helping Israel target a top Hamas leader and identify other militants who were later killed by Israeli forces, said Ihab Ghussein, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza. They were arrested in 2003 and charged a year later, and had exhausted all legal means to appeal the sentence, he said.
The deaths brought to five the number of Palestinians executed by Hamas for spying since the Islamic group seized control of Gaza in 2007. Another seventeen alleged informers were killed in vigilante-style shootings by Palestinians during the three-week Israeli offensive in Gaza that ended in January 2009. Some were on death row or awaiting trial by Hamas. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the men were accused of involvement in a 2003 assassination attempt against Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas co-founder. Israel killed Rantisi in 2004. The two men executed on July 26 were already jailed by then.