PALESTINE: The death penalty is one way Palestinian authorities feel they can restore order, writes Nuala Haughey in the Gaza Strip
The first Salah Musallam's family knew that he had been hanged in Gaza Central Prison last weekend was when they heard it reported on local radio.
Salah (27) was among four murder convicts executed in what was the first use of capital punishment by the Palestinian authorities in three years, and a public signal of their efforts to curb ongoing lawlessness in the territories.
Salah's family is angry he was selected from 55 prisoners on death row, many of whom were convicted of collaborating with Israeli intelligence.
"They didn't tell him anything about what they were planning to do, they just took him to the slaughterhouse of Gaza, the slaughterhouse of the state of law of Abu Mazen [ Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas]," says his brother Ahmed (36), his body taut with anger.
Convicted of the murder and robbery of a 38-year-old woman in his apartment in January 1996, Salah had served almost 10 years in prison and had hoped he would eventually be released, according to Ahmed.
When Salah's family heard recently that President Abbas was seeking an Islamic legal ruling on pending death row cases from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, their lawyer submitted an appeal to the Justice Ministry.
They claimed Salah was innocent, that he confessed only after he was beaten and tortured, and that in any case he should not face the death penalty because he was under the age of majority at the time of the killing. Ahmed takes a copy of the letter from a dog-eared red folder. They received no reply, he says.
President Abbas is under intense pressure to impose law and order in the Palestinian areas and maintain a truce ahead of Israel's planned withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip this summer. But despite his efforts to revamp his security forces, militant groups and armed gangs continue to operate, often clashing with rival factions or police.
In Gaza City last Saturday, Palestinian security forces exchanged fire with militants who shot up the house of the Gazan head of preventative security, Gen Rashid Abu Shbak. Gunmen have also protested after being denied jobs in the Palestinian security forces.
The executions of the four men, none of whom was believed to be affiliated to the major militant groups, are seen by some as an attempt to deter criminals and send a message to the public without directly confronting the militants.
"There is a new policy of enforcing the law, to face and fight the chaos and lawlessness in the Palestinian territories," said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, following Sunday's executions.
But this is not how Ahmed sees it.
"Salah was selected because he's not from a big clan," he says. "Survival is for the powerful. Abbas says this is to end crime. Today three people were killed in Gaza in a family feud. Were the perpetrators of that crime deterred?"
In recommending the resumption of executions, the Grand Mufti said delaying the pending execution orders "encouraged the phenomenon of revenge in the Palestinian community."
Statistics show this phenomenon to be real. Out of the 73 people sentenced to death since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, Sunday's killings bring to nine the total number of those executed by the authorities.
But nine others - including men accused or convicted of collaborating with Israeli intelligence - were killed in attacks in prisons, court rooms or hospitals, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The most audacious of such attacks came in February 2004 when Hamas gunmen killed two men convicted of collaborating with Israel, shooting them at close range in Gaza City's Shifa Hospital only hours after they were admitted for wounds suffered when a grenade exploded in their jail cell. The men had confessed during their trials to helping Israeli forces kill two top Islamic militants.
Human rights groups have expressed serious concerns about the resumption of executions, which were suspended by the late president Yasser Arafat in 2002 in response to international pressure.
"It's a grave and cruel violation of the right to life and it doesn't go in the direction we expected from Abu Mazen at the very same time that he is talking about institutional and legal reform and combating corruption," said Hamdi Shaqqura, director of democratic development unit with the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
But Shaqqura acknowledges that most Palestinians are in favour of the death penalty as punishment for normal crimes.
Outside Gaza's Al-Azhar University this week, final year political science student Mahmoud Barakat (23) said the death penalty was a valid deterrent for murderers, drug dealers and collaborators. "In some human rights courses I have taken, I learned that one of the major rights in the human rights declaration is the right to life, though when it comes to the death penalty the person has usually offended against the right to life of another person - that's why it's normal in these cases that the other person is killed," he said.
Samar Abu-Safyah (20), an English student, also supported state executions of collaborators.
"It's an important part of our religion that every human should be responsible for their actions or behaviour so the person who does the mistake should be punished," she said.