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Suspects in Faqha Assassination Confessed, Were Served a Hamas Execution | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Yahya Sinwar (R) the new leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh attend the funeral of Hamas official Mazen Faqha in Gaza city on March 25, 2017. (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams)


Gaza Strip’s Hamas movement served on Sunday three Palestinian suspects a death sentence, after finding that they had directly been involved in collaborating with an Israeli-directed assassination of one of the group’s military wing commanders Mazen Faqha.

A Hamas security court said the three men had confessed to the killing of Faqha who was shot in the head and the chest in his car on March 24 near his Gaza home.

“The field court has sentenced the three convicted of carrying out the crime of the assassination of martyr Mazen Faqaha to death,” said Brigadier-General Naser Suleiman, chairman of the Hamas-run military judiciary.

Hamas convicted all three, aged 44, 38 and 38, of collaborating with Israel. It said that one of the men carried out the actual shooting and the other two had provided Israeli security agencies with information about Faqaha’s whereabouts.

Israel jailed Faqaha in 2003 for planning attacks against Israelis and sentenced him to nine life terms. He was released in 2011, as part of a group of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners whom Israel freed in exchange for a captive soldier.

Israeli media said that after Faqaha’s release and exile to Gaza that he continued to plan attacks by Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.