AN ANIMAL’S ADMISSION: ‘I Strangled Them With My Own Hands’: Yahya Sinwar’s Testimony In 1989

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A newly revealed transcript of a 1989 interrogation of Yahya Sinwar sheds light on the Hamas leader’s decades-long history of violence.

That year, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) arrested Sinwar in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, for the murder of collaborators with Israel.

Sinwar, who was in charge of gathering intelligence about collaborators, surprised Israeli investigators when he gave them a tour around Gaza revealing the locations where he had buried the bodies of collaborators he had murdered, mostly by strangling them with his own hands.

“I’m ready to tell you everything, from the beginning, things I’ve done and never talked about,” he said, according to a transcript of the interrogation, which is 10 pages long and is kept in the archives of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.

Around three years earlier, in 1986, Sinwar had joined forces with the then-head of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin. Yassin had just been released from Israeli prison, one of 1,151 prisoners released as part of the Jibril Agreement, in return for which three Israeli soldiers, who had been taken hostage during the 1982 First Lebanon War, were released.

In coordination with Yassin, Sinwar founded a subgroup whose task was to identify collaborators with Israel.

“When Sheikh Yassin was released from prison in the exchange deal, I would go to visit him,” Sinwar said. “We sat and talked about the situation in the Gaza Strip, the situation of Islam and the collaborators with Israel.

“We decided to employ people who would gather information on the collaborators and on everyone who was against Islam. I knew it was dangerous, so I recruited Rawhi Jamal who could be trusted.

“I updated Sheikh Yassin and we started working. Each was responsible for a different area, I received the southern area of the Gaza Strip. We would pass information between us in mailboxes in mosques.”

Sinwar told investigators that he later recruited more operatives, mainly from Gaza colleges, and that the assassinations were approved by Yassin.

Shooting or strangling

During the hours-long questioning, Sinwar provided gruesome details of the murders of collaborators, all of which he committed himself—either by shooting or by strangling the suspect.

In one instance, Sinwar tracked a Gazan named Rasmi Salim, after receiving information that he was an apostate and collaborated with Israel.

“We were driving a white Peugeot, stopped next to Rasmi, caught him, and pushed him in the car,” Sinwar described with eerie casualness. “We interrogated Rasmi, and he admitted that he was in contact with Israeli intelligence, with a man named Abu Rami. He also admitted that he used to bring girls to his shop and mess with them.

“We took him to the cemetery in Khan Yunis, without telling him what we were going to do. I tied his eyes with a rag so he couldn’t see, pushed him into an open grave and suffocated him with a rag. After strangling him, I wrapped him in a white cloth and filled in the grave. I understood from Rasmi that he realized that he deserved to die.”

Sinwar told the investigators that Hamas later provided him with a weapon, but he preferred to kill the suspects with his hands.

Thus, for instance, he described how, following similar intelligence, the group killed a Gazan named Adnan Safur, whom Sinwar threatened with a gun and abducted. After a violent interrogation (“We beat him”), Safur admitted that he had collaborated with Israel, which immediately sealed his fate. “I suffocated him with a keffiyeh, we dug a hole and buried him,” Sinwar said.

He provided details of two more murders: “We saw Fathi Issa walking alone in the Bureij refugee camp,” Sinwar told investigators. “We got out of the vehicle, threatened him with a gun, and shoved him in the car. From there we drove to an orchard and I interrogated Fathi.

“I grabbed his throat with one hand and started choking him. With the other hand, I punched him in the stomach, and suddenly he had a heart attack and died. We drove to the neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, and using a hoe we dug a hole. When we finished, we returned to the orchard to bury him.”

Sinwar and his men’s next target was Hussein al-Sir from Khan Younis, a wealthy man who liked to show off his Mercedes car. “When we found him inside his vehicle, I took out a gun and threatened him.

“I pressed the gun to his neck to force him into the car, but the gun went off and killed him. We put him in the car, drove away and buried the body. After that, we washed the car to get rid of the blood and went home. After some time, I think the next day, we saw the [Israeli] military there and knew that they had found Hussein’s body.”

For these and other murders, Sinwar was convicted and sentenced to five life sentences, which he was supposed to serve until his death, but in October 2011 he was released from prison (where he learned Hebrew)—having served only 22 years—as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

After his release, Sinwar gained power and popularity within Hamas, becoming its Gaza leader in February 2017 after defeating Ismail Haniyeh in internal elections. JNS


9 COMMENTS

  1. Mr. Walid Shoebat said:

    “In Palestinian schools, all I learned was hate.”

    SOURCE: Intermountain Jewish News, 2003 September 12

    NOTE: Mr. Walid Shoebat started his life as an Arab terrorist.
    He left Islam and now speaks in favor of Israel and Jews.

    ===================================
    PS: Please feel free to copy this quote to your computer for future reference.
    ===================================

  2. Mr. Walid Shoebat started his life as an Arab terrorist.
    He left Islam and now speaks in favor of Israel and Jews.

    The quotes shown below are from an article written
    by Steve Lipman in The Jewish Week, 2006/11/10,
    titled “Bethlehem’s Disciple”:

    ===================================
    “The problem is not an issue of land, it is not an issue of occupation.
    It is an issue of the occupation of the minds of millions of Muslims.”

    ===================================
    “The Koran teaches that infidels should be KILLED.
    Which part of KILL does the West not understand?
    There are no allegories in the Koran.”

    ===================================
    Walid Shoebat is author of WHY I LEFT ISLAM,
    year 2005, published by Top Executive Books.

    His web site is: www dot Shoebat dot com

    ===================================
    PS: Please feel free to copy these quotes to your computer for future reference.
    ===================================

  3. *** QUOTES FROM THE KORAN
    ABOUT FIGHTING AGAINST INFIDELS [NON-MUSLIMS] ***

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 8, paragraph 12:

    “Your Lord inspired the angels with the message:

    I will terrorize the unbelievers.
    Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them.
    Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 8, paragraph 39:

    “So fight them [the infidels] until there is no more
    fitnah [disbelief of non-Muslims] and all
    [people in the world] submit to the religion of Allah alone.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 8, paragraph 59:

    “The infidels [non-Muslims] should not think that they can get away from us.
    Prepare against them whatever weapons you can muster,
    so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah’s enemy.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 8, paragraph 65:

    “O Prophet, urge the faithful to fight.
    If there are 20 among you with determination they will vanquish 200.
    If there are 100 then they will slaughter 1,000 unbelievers,
    because the infidels are a people devoid of understanding.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 9, paragraph 5:

    “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them,
    take them captive, harass them,
    lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 9, paragraph 14:

    “Fight them and Allah will punish them by your hands,
    lay them low, and cover them with shame.
    He will help you over them.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 9, paragraph 29:

    “Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender,
    paying the protective tax [jizya] in submission.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 9, paragraph 123:

    “Fight the unbelievers around you, and let them find harshness in you.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 47, paragraph 4:

    “When you clash with the unbelieving infidels in battle,
    smite their necks until you overpower them,
    killing and wounding many of them.

    At length, when you have thoroughly subdued them,
    bind them firmly, making [them] captives.

    Thereafter either generosity or ransom
    (whichever benefits Islam) until the war lays down its burdens.

    Thus you are commanded by Allah to continue
    carrying out Jihad against the unbelieving infidels
    until they submit to Islam.”

    ===================================
    Koran, chapter 61, paragraph 9:

    “He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed)
    with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam)
    to make it victorious over all religions,
    even though the infidels may resist.”

    ===================================
    PS : Please copy these quotes to your computer, for future reference.
    ===================================

  4. Abdul Aziz told this to Harold Dickson in [year] 1937 [CE]:

    “Our hatred for the Jews, dates from God’s condemnation
    of them for their persecution and rejection of ‘Isa [Jesus Christ]
    and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet [Muhammad]…

    “Verily the word of God teaches us – and we implicitly
    believe this O Dickson – that for a Muslim to kill a Jew [in war],
    or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate
    entry in Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”

    Abdul Aziz made this statement to [Harold] Dickson
    as part of his protest at the Peel Report, Britain’s 1937
    plan to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and
    Arab areas, thereby granting the Zionists the basis
    for the independent state that they dreamed of…”

    SOURCE:
    The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa’ud
    (chapter 29, page 259) by Robert Lacey,
    published in year year 1981 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
    New York, ISBN-10: 0006365094 * ISBN-13: 978-0006365099

    ===================================
    PS : Please copy these quotes to your computer, for future reference.
    ===================================

  5. Israel has a death penalty for Nazis. This proves that they need to institute the death penalty for Hamas PIJ members as well.

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