2 Palestinians given death for drug smuggling

GAZA CITY: A Hamas military court on Sunday sentenced two Palestinians to death for drug smuggling in the Gaza Strip, in the first punishment of its kind in the enclave.

“The Gaza military court announced the death penalty for two civilians from Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, for selling narcotics,” the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry said in a statement.

It said a third suspect was sentenced to hard labor.

Authorities have seized drugs with a street value of around $1 million (€900,000) over the past few months, the ministry said.

They seized 1,250 packets of cannabis and 400 pills of Tramadol — a powerful opiatebased painkiller — in January alone, it said.

Marijuana and prescription painkillers have been flooding into the Gaza Strip, prompting officials from Hamas to seek tougher penalties for smuggling drugs.

Until Sunday, only people guilty of spying for Israel or murder had received the death penalty in Gaza, controlled by Hamas since 2007.

Both convicted dealers were caught smuggling marijuana, opium and tramadol through tunnels under the border with Egypt, according to a list of their charges.

“Such actions represented a threat to Palestinian national security, with its economic and political dimensions,” the court said.

All Palestinian death sentences in theory have to be approved by President Mahmoud Abbas, but Hamas has long refused to accept his legitimacy.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says around a dozen death sentences have been passed down in Gaza since the start of 2017.