Hamas' reign of terror covered by - NPR!

A rare NPR piece that blames someone besides Israel for something in the Middle East:

Life was already grim in the Gaza Strip when fighting raged between Israel and Hamas last November. Then Khulud Badawi got unexpected bad news about her husband.

"I was at home when my son came in and said, 'Mom, they killed Dad.' I said, 'Who?' He said, 'Hamas.' I asked him, 'Where?' He said, 'Next to the gas station,'" she recalls.

Badawi's husband, Ribhi Badawi, was in prison in Gaza City. He was supposed to go to court that day for a final appeal of charges that he had collaborated with Israel against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

But Ribhi Badawi was taken from prison and executed in public, along with five other inmates. They were all accused of being collaborators, or informants, working for Israel.

"In this case, what was remarkable was that these men were not executed in anything resembling legislative authority or the penal authority of the Hamas government, but by armed men," says Sarah Leah Whitson, who directs the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch.

Wow - how could that have happened?

Hamas, which has been in control of Gaza since 2007, has executed people judged to be collaborators. But in the six deaths last Nov. 20, the Hamas-run government said it was not responsible.

"What happened was against the law," Islam Shawan, a spokesman for Gaza's Interior Ministry, says. "We had a high-level committee investigate, and it handed down tough punishments to security officials who failed to do their jobs."

Shawan won't name names, give ranks or offer any other information, but he claims that four people working in the prison system were punished. One was fired, one was transferred, one was jailed and one lost any chance at promotions.

He has no progress to report on tracking down the people who actually did the killings, but he does claim progress in cracking down on collaboration.

This puzzle gets harder and harder to solve. I mean, Hamas says they are working to find the people responsible for the murders, and the murderers haven't yet been caught, so they must be very, very smart.

For some reason I am reminded of OJ Simpson and his "investigation" into the murderer of his wife.

(h/t D)