GAZA: Hamas adopts an Egyptian law which allows capital punishment for drug dealers

Record ID: 258934

  • Title: GAZA: Hamas adopts an Egyptian law which allows capital punishment for drug dealers
  • Date: 3rd December 2009
  • Summary: GAZA CITY, GAZA (DECEMBER 3, 2009) (REUTERS) DRUGS CONFISCATED BY HAMAS GOVERNMENT, PAN TO COUNTERFEIT MONEY HAMAS GOVERNMENT WORKER SHOWING HASHISH INSIDE CREAM CHEESE BOX VARIOUS CONFISCATED PILES OF HASHISH NAME PLAQUE READING: 'ATTORNEY GENERAL - MOHAMMED ABED' (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) 'ATTORNEY GENERAL MOHAMMED ABED SAYING: "The scope of the application of the Egypt
  • Embargoed: 18th December 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA264OBYPZT4SZHZ4ZR8A73RYN2
  • Story Text: Alarmed by mounting drug abuse and addiction among the cooped-up Palestinians of Gaza, Islamist rulers of the enclave plan to introduce the death penalty for gangs getting rich off smuggled narcotics.
    Security officials of the Hamas movement and human rights groups say drug smuggling through tunnels that bring in all manner of goods from Egypt to get around the Israeli blockade has increased alarmingly in the past few months.
    Nearly a third of 300 prisoners in Gaza's main jail are 'doing time' for drug offences, but officials say prison is clearly not a sufficient deterrent to the lucrative trade.
    Now Hamas is getting tough, replacing an Israeli military law and its 10-year maximum sentence with an Egyptian regulation that allows hard labour and capital punishment.
    "The scope of the application of the Egyptian law applies to the development of the crime, in terms of the type of crime, how it is committed, and the criminals themselves. We see that Egyptian law is more advanced in dealing with the various stages of the crime than the Israeli military courts," said Gaza Hamas-appointed attorney-general Mohammed Abed.
    Abed has no shortage of evidence seized recently.
    A storage room in the prosecutor's headquarters is full of washing machines, tape recorders, televisions, computer sets and packs of cheese that were stuffed with hashish and pills.
    The opiate pain-killer Tramadol has been a big seller in the Gaza Strip for the past year amongst the population of 1.5 million who have found solace in drugs from the devastation inflicted by Israel's 3-week military onslaught last January, launched to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel.
    A million tablets of Tramadol were brought in inside a single washing machine, an aide to Abed said. The psychedelic ecstasy is also easy to smuggle and is popular with the young. Police say it is sold in Gaza's high schools.
    Psychologists say drugs are used to overcome depression in a society torn by political divisions between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, whose visions of the Palestinian future diverge radically.
    Hamas rejects any peace deal that recognizes Israel. Fatah wants to make a pace with the Jewish state and create a Palestinian state alongside it, in the West Bank and Gaza.
    But the motivations of some drug-users are also banal: to banish boredom, improve concentration or for sexual enjoyment.
    Gaza's Hamas government officially supports tunnel trade as a way of defying Israel's blockade, and says it closely oversees the goods that flow underground every day.
    However human rights groups say there is not nearly enough control to fight the drug trade.
    Khalil Abu Shamaleh, director of Al Dameer Association for Human Rights, said the past few months were the worst in many years for the spread of the drugs in the strip.
    He said stiffened penalties would not stop the crime and called on Hamas to tighten its grip on the tunnel trade.
    "Unless we see real intervention and real treatment I think we will face a crisis. This is a result of increased drug use as well as the increase in numbers of drug dealers who deal in drugs of all types," Abu Shamaleh said.
    But the only way Gaza can expect to return to a more normal existence is if the blockade is lifted and conventional trading resumes, with proper customs and police controls and official collaboration with neighbour states.
    Only détente between Israel and Hamas can make that happen.
    Gaza prisoners serving jail terms for dealing hashish say they did it simply to make money, in a place some have called 'an open-air prison,' with no jobs and no future.
    Gaza economists put unemployment and poverty rates in Gaza at over 50 percent. The Israeli offensive wiped out most of the local industry there was and the blockade has prevented the import of steel and cement to rebuild.
    Two prisoners who spoke to Reuters said they hoped the new law does not target minor criminals such as themselves while the big fish escape and carry on getting rich.
    They cannot prove anything against the main drug dealers, one unidentified prisoner told Reuters.
    "They give the impression in town that they are good people and no one can say they are drug dealers," said a jailed father of two.
    He told Reuters, "after a year or two of Hamas rule the tunnel work came back and this is what brought us destruction."
    The unidentified prisoner has made bail but cannot afford the 2,000 NIS (540 US dollars) money required to pay Hamas' prison authorities.
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