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| Middle East |
| PA sentences human rights worker to count muzzle blasts... |
| 2002-10-29 |
| A Palestinian human rights worker faces death by firing squad after a Palestinian court convicted him of spying for Israel. Haidar Ghanem, 39, worked for the Israeli human rights group B'tselem. But he admitted to reporters that he was also an informer for Israeli intelligence. So was he really a freedom fighter? Or was his "admission" beaten out of him? His trial on Monday took just nine hours. The judge, Gen. Abdel Aziz Wadi, said Ghanem was convicted of "collaborating with foreign security services." He is the third Palestinian to be sentenced to death in the last two weeks for working with Israeli intelligence. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must approve the sentences before they are carried out. During two years of Palestinian-Israeli fighting, four suspected collaborators have been killed by firing squads; 52 others have been slain by Palestinian vigilantes. Onlyh 52? That sounds like an under-report. Maybe it just seems like more. Or doesn't that count the ones who were shot who were innocent? B'tselem complained that Israeli security might have allowed Ghanem to become a field worker with the human rights group as a front for spying, adding that the Shin Bet security agency's actions "endanger the lives of B'tselem workers and human rights workers" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 PA mentality: an insufficiently militant palestinian = Israeli spy. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-10-30 02:25:32 |