Top cleric approves Palestinian executions
A top Muslim cleric has approved the execution of five Palestinians, out of 51 on death row, and is still studying the remaining cases, religious officials said today.
The first executions are expected to be carried out soon, the officials said, as part of a new law-and-order offensive by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. During growing lawlessness in recent years, Palestinians increasingly resorted to vigilante justice.
Abbas had asked the cleric, Mufti Ikrema Sabri, to review the death penalty cases and recommend which inmates should be executed. Abbas is expected to follow the mufti’s advice.
The mufti said he was initially given 15 cases for review, and made recommendations in five. He would not elaborate, but religious officials said he ruled the five inmates be executed.
The 51 were sentenced to death over the past six years, but the execution orders were held up.
“Delaying the execution orders encouraged the phenomenon of revenge in the Palestinian community,” Sabri said. “Revenge is absolutely forbidden by religion, and thus the Palestinian Authority should exercise its role, and people should not take he law into their own hands.”
Of the 51 on death row, about half are alleged informers for Israel and the remainder have been convicted of murder and other violent crimes. It was not clear to which group the five marked for execution belonged.
Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, several people have been executed by firing squad, usually for crimes that sparked a major public outcry, such as the rape and killing of a child.
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