GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A court in the Gaza Strip on Sunday sentenced three men to death over the assassination of a Hamas terror chief that Hamas accused Israel of masterminding.
After a trial that lasted four days, two of the accused were sentenced to be hanged and one to be shot, the military court announced.
The assassination of Mazen Faqha in the middle of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in March shocked the Islamist terror organization and raised the possibility of a new round of violence with Israel.
Hamas immediately blamed Israel, with which it has fought three wars since 2008, and implemented strict border restrictions on those seeking to leave the Palestinian enclave.
Israel has not confirmed or denied the accusations.
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Hamas security forces escort Abdallah al-Nashar (C), a Palestinian man convicted of the murder of Hamas terror chief Mazen Faqha, out of the military court in Gaza City on May 21, 2017. (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams)
In Sunday’s court ruling, the chief suspect, Ashraf Abu Leila, 38, was sentenced to hang after being convicted of murder.
The others were identified only as Hisham al-Aloul, 44, who was also sentenced to hang, and Abdallah al-Nashar, who was to face the firing squad. They were convicted of collaborating with Israel.
Mazen Faqha upon his release after the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011. (screen capture: Twitter)
Faqha had been in charge of forming cells for Hamas’s military wing the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the West Bank — overseeing, from Gaza, efforts to carry out terror attacks against Israeli targets from the West Bank.
He had spent years in an Israeli jail for terrorist activities including orchestrating a 2002 suicide bombing in which 9 Israelis were killed, before being released to Gaza as part of the 2011 Shalit prisoner exchange deal.
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