First death sentences for drug Gaza

gaza - A tribunal in the Gaza Strip on Sunday condemned the first two drug traffickers to death. Two others were given prison sentences of seven and nine years. The death penalty was in the strip controlled by Hamas so far only spoken homicide or a conviction for collaborating with Israel.

The two death row inmates were caught when they were smuggling drugs through tunnels from Egypt. Their contraband consisted mainly of marijuana, opium and the painkiller tramadol.

In the police 400 000 tablets seized in the last three months. The small, almost besieged Gaza Strip is now flooded by the police with drugs. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said more drugs have been seized in January than in all of 2016. He said that there are severe penalties ' the merchants of death ruining our people and life. '

The poor Palestinian Gaza occupies only 365 square kilometers and has approximately 1.8 million inhabitants. By Israel and Egypt isolated strip of land is managed since 2007 by the radical Islamist movement Hamas.