Ref: 94/2022

Date: 01 August 2022

Time: 11:00 GMT

On Monday, 01 August 2022, the Permanent Military Court in Gaza City sentenced (J. Q.) (26), a police officer, from Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, to death by firing squad after he was convicted of premeditated murder in a family dispute that took place on 14 July 2022.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) affirms its condemnation of all murder crimes and its total support with the families of victims and their right to remedy. In the meantime, PCHR reiterates that death penalty is not the only mean to achieve justice or deter such crimes and highlights the fact that Palestine is a State Party to the 1989 Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.

PCHR expresses its grave concern over the speedy trail of (J. Q.) as the hearings started on 20 July and only after 11 days he was sentenced. As such, this trial qualifies as a summary trial that is a serious breach of international law.

Accordingly, the death sentences issued in 2022 in Gaza rise to 15, including 5 sentences issued in affirmation of former death sentences by Appeal Court. The total number of death sentences issued in the Palestinian territory since 1994 reached 268; 30 in the West Bank and 238 in the Gaza Strip. Among those issued in the Gaza Strip, 179 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 conducted without the ratification of the Palestinian President in violation of Palestinian law. In this context, PCHR stresses the need to refrain from ratifying death sentences in a prelude to abolishing this punishment from the Palestinian legislations.

PCHR stresses that the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is biding to Palestine, including the Gaza Strip. 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 related to the death penalty in the Palestinian that conflict with Palestine’s obligations under the ICCPR Protocol aiming at abolishing the death penalty.