Palestinians Monday demanded the execution of four men for the rape and murder of a Gaza girl of 16, a rare sex crime that has deepened fears of a slide into lawlessness accelerated by the conflict with Israel.
| Where the hell are my Milk Duds? |
"Human wolves," the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam headlined in reference to the arrested suspects in a case that has shocked the Palestinians' conservative Muslim society, where rape has long been a taboo topic. Gazans knew that the girl was abducted as she left school last September and found strangled 48 hours later in a garbage bin. But investigators did not confirm until Friday, when they announced the arrest of the suspects, that she had been raped. "Death to the filthy killers!" chanted at least 4,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of students and militants firing rifles into the air, in a rally at a seaside refugee camp near the family home of the slain teen-ager, Maiada Abu Lamdi. "We are asking the Palestinian Authority to implement the law of Allah -- let the killers' hands and legs be cut off and let the killers be hung in public!" they shouted.
| I'm all for shooting them. I don't think sadism is usually considered good public policy, though... |
Colonel Majed Abu Shammala, Gaza's chief criminal investigator, said the suspects in the girl's case, all taxi drivers aged 22 to 24, had confessed under questioning and were charged with rape and murder. They were jailed pending trial.
| Or until the victim's relatives break in and kill them all, whichever comes first... |
Armed gangs, often drawn from militant groups fighting Israel in an uprising and sometimes from the security organs themselves, have been behind a sharp rise in robbery, extortion, abductions and murder in the cities of Gaza and the West Bank. "We are following cases of abuse of weapons, especially official weapons, in family feuds and the settling of accounts," said Hamdi Shaqoura of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "We don't want to worry about our children as they play in the street and go to school," a refugee woman told Reuters as Monday's protest march passed by her house. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie called at a meeting of the dominant Fatah movement's Revolutionary Council last week for a crackdown on the militia gangs, but no action was decided.
| I'm not surprised in the least... |
|