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Japan | Hakamada found religion, but then felt under attack by ‘the devil’

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Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series on letters that Iwao Hakamada wrote while on death row. About a decade after cursing God, Iwao Hakamada was baptized Catholic at the Tokyo Detention House on Dec. 24, 1984. “Since I have been given the Christian name Paul, I am keenly feeling that I should be aware of the greatness of Paul.” (June 1985)

Palestinian collaborators sentenced to death

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Many informants handed themselves in during the two month amnesty that ended on Sunday, says Hamas.

Ramallah: The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has condemned the death sentence passed by the Gaza Military Court on a Palestinian who was found guilty of collaborating with Israel, demanding an immediate suspension of death verdicts executed in Gaza without presidential approval.

PCHR said in a statement that the military court sentenced a Palestinian civilian identified as M.A.N from Al Sha’af neighbourhood, east of Gaza, to death under the Revolutionary Penalty Law, 1979.

The centre said this was the second verdict of its kind since the beginning of the year and that a total of 134 death verdicts had been passed in the Palestinian territories since the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was set up in 1994.

Of these, 107 death verdicts had been issued in the Gaza Strip and 27 other death verdicts passed in the West Bank.

The centre said that since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, a total of 46 death verdicts had been passed.

The centre added that a total of 27 death sentences had already been executed in the Palestinian territories, 25 of which had been executed in Gaza and the other two in the West Bank. The centre said that there had been 14 executions in Gaza since 2007 and that these had occurred without the approval of the PNA President Mahmoud Abbas, contrary to the terms of the Palestinian Basic Law which enjoys constitutional status.

The two months amnesty announced by the Hamas Ministry of Interior on March 12 giving collaborators with Israel the chance to turn themselves in ended on Sunday with the ministry announcing that a large number of collaborators have already surrendered to the authorities.

Hamas’ Ministry of Interior said the Israeli security service had suffered from the amnesty despite the massive efforts the security service had put in to secure their collaborators.

The ministry said the Hamas campaign had introduced the Palestinian public in Gaza to the sophisticated tactics which the Israelis use to recruit collaborators through hundreds of lectures, workshops and seminars to arm the Palestinian public with the necessary knowledge to resist the Israeli attempts.

The ministry said that only collaborators with blood on their hands will be sentenced to death, but none of the others will be, and those who turn themselves in and show genuine repentance will be spared and the individual’s offence would not be disclosed.

Source: Gulf News, May 13, 2013
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