During last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, Hamas summarily executed 23 men and used Shifa hospital to interrogate and torture prisoners according to Amnesty International, The Washington Post reported yesterday.
The Amnesty report describes Hamas forces targeting Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel and executing at least 23 people extrajudicially. …
Six men among the 23 were paraded in front of a mosque in Gaza City after Friday prayers on Aug. 22, 2014. They were hooded and their hands bound behind them, and they were forced to their knees. As a crowd watched, an executioner fired a bullet into each man’s head. Each man was then shot in the torso with an AK-47 assault rifle. …
The Amnesty report also said security forces from Hamas’s Interior Ministry used an outpatient clinic at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre.”
Amnesty International’s report also faulted the Palestinian Authority (PA) for failing to stop the executions or investigate them. Prior to Operation Protective Edge, the PA agreed to a unity government with Hamas. Shortly after the agreement, PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah acknowledged that the PA could not control Hamas or disarm the terror organization as it was obligated to do.
Last year, the Post reported that Shifa hospital was being used as a headquarters for Hamas, observing that the terror organization’s leaders could “be seen in the hallways and offices.”
In 2008, during Operation Cast Lead, The New York Times reported on a summary execution that took place in the hospital.
Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.
In the fourth-floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head.
Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.
[Photo: World News Times / YouTube ]