Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
When the preacher’s body arrived at the hospital, his back was scarlet where he had been whipped with pipes. His legs were black with bruises. His wrists were sliced open and bloodied. The Palestinian Authority, which had been holding Majd Barghouti in an intelligence-service prison for the previous week, soon declared that the popular Hamas imam, or prayer leader, had died of a heart attack. But eyewitness accounts, photographs, video and an independent Palestinian investigation released this month suggested that he was tortured to death during his February detention. …
Barghouti’s killing offers a rare glimpse into a subterranean war that plays out daily in the West Bank, where two Palestinian factions vie for power. Fatah, which dominates the U.S.- backed Palestinian Authority, uses its power in the West Bank to keep Hamas at a disadvantage—banning Hamas newspapers, breaking up Hamas demonstrations and shutting down Hamas-affiliated social services groups. It has also arrested hundreds of Hamas activists in the West Bank.
Barghouti, who was suspected of involvement in Hamas’s military wing, is believed to have been the first to die under interrogation since tensions between the two movements flared into street fighting when Hamas took sole control of the Gaza Strip last June. But the independent report found evidence that torture is regularly used against political prisoners in Palestinian Authority facilities. Access the full article>>