Mahmoud Ishtiwi was executed in 2016, and Hamas has tried to keep the affair quiet ever since. The Israeli military has found documents in a Gaza tunnel recording his ordeal and showing that Hamas continued to torture members believed to be gay.
Among the documents, according to a report in The Times, was an account written by Sinwar’s victim, who according to a Hamas statement issued after his death was killed after confessing to “behavioural and moral violations”, a euphemism for homosexuality.
“The fear gripped me without end,” Ishtiwi wrote. “They would beat me 400-500 times … they held me blindfolded for five days … there were days in which I was beaten for 20 hours, and sometimes 48 hours … I was suspended by my arms and legs, swinging while four men whipped me … I confessed more than once under torture.”
The documents unearthed by the IDF also include a letter sent by Ishtiwi’s family to Ismail Haniyeh, the Qatar-based Hamas politburo chief, saying he was taken to an open grave and told: “This is your tomb. We will pour concrete on you until it reaches your mouth — and it won’t be the first time we’ve done this.”
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GAZA CITY — The death of Mahmoud Ishtiwi had all the trappings of a telenovela: sex, torture, and embezzlement in Gaza’s most venerated and secretive institution, the armed wing of Hamas.
Ishtiwi, 34, was a commander from a storied family of Hamas loyalists who, during the 2014 war with Israel, was responsible for 1,000 fighters and a network of attack tunnels. In 2016 his former comrades executed him with three bullets to the chest.
Adding a layer of scandal to the story, he was accused of moral turpitude, by which Hamas meant homosexuality. And there were whispers that he had carved the word “zulum’’ — wronged — into his body in a desperate kind of last testament.
His death has become the talk of the town in the conservative quarters of Gaza, the Palestinian coastal territory, discussed in living rooms, at checkpoints, and in cabs. But to Gaza observers, this was more substantive than a soap opera.
Ishtiwi, who leaves two wives and three children, was not the first member of Hamas’ armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, to be killed by his own. What was unprecedented was the way his relatives spoke out publicly about it.
The family was considered Hamas royalty for having sheltered leaders wanted by Israel, including Mohammed Deif, the Qassam commander in chief lionized by Palestinians. Ishtiwi’s mother even sent Deif, who has lost an eye and limbs but has survived repeated assassination attempts by Israel, a tearful video message in which she entreated him to release her son.
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Human rights watch report on Ishtiwi:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/15/palestine-torture-death-hamas-detainee
