Ref: 136/2021
Date: 1 December 2021
Time: 13:00 GMT
On Wednesday, 1 December 2021, the Permanent Military Court in the Gaza Strip issued a sentence to death by firing squad against 43-year-old S.Gh from Rafah, after convicting him of raping a child in Rafah and possession of drugs in November 2021.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) expresses its condemnation of the heinous crime and its departure of all social, religious, and humanitarian principles, and stresses its full solidarity with the victim’s family and their right to access justice; nevertheless, PCHR emphasized that the enormity of the crime does not nullify the necessary guarantees for justice.
The law must be respected in all instances, and justice, not revenge, should be the moto of the judiciary establishment. PCHR asserts that the justice institution should alienate itself and preserve its conduct regardless of the pressure of public opinion. In any case, the judiciary must be the guardian of redress even towards criminals.
The defendant’s trial began on 24 November 2021 before the Military Justice, as a member of the Palestinian police. The sentence was issued today, i.e. the trial took only one week. As such, this trial qualifies as a summary trial under international law, a serious breach of the State of Palestine’s international obligations, particularly under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Second Optional Protocol; both are legal binding to Palestine after its accession to both in 2014 and 2018 respectively.PCHR reiterates its categorical rejection of the death penalty and confirms its position that the death penalty is not the appropriate mean to achieve justice or deter crimes; rather, it is an inhumane way that conflicts with Palestine’s international legal obligations under the 1989 Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.
This is the 23rd sentence of its kind in 2021 in the Gaza Strip as 4 previous death sentences were issued this year: 16 at courts of first instance, including 9 by military courts; and 7 by appeal courts.
Thus, the total number of death sentences issued by courts of firstinstance in the Palestinian territory since 1994 reached 252; 30 in the West Bank and 222 in the Gaza Strip. Among those issued in the Gaza Strip, 136 sentences were issued after the 2007 Palestinian political division.Since the establishment of the PA in 1994, 41 death sentences were executed: 39 in the Gaza Strip, and two in the West Bank. Of those executed in the Gaza Strip, 28 were carried out without the ratification of the Palestinian President in violation of Palestinian law.
In this context, PCHR commends the Palestinian President’s position not to ratify any death sentence since 2005 and stresses the need to refrain from ratifying death sentences in a prelude to abolishing this punishment from the Palestinian legislations.
PCHR reminds the authorities in Gaza of Palestine’s international legal obligations under the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which obliges Palestine to suspend use of the death penalty as a prelude to its abolishment from Palestinian legislations.
Therefore, PCHR calls on the authorities in the Gaza Strip not to use the death penalty and replace it with a life sentence with hard labor.PCHR also calls upon the Palestinian President to issue a law by decree to suspend the use of legal articles that permit the death penalty in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, until an elected legislative authority assumes the legislative power and abolishes it from Palestinian legislations.
