"Bloody end to Gaza kidnap case" April 20, 2011|Associated Press
NUSSEIRAT, Gaza Strip — An Al Qaeda-inspired militant implicated in the death of an Italian activist killed himself and an associate as Hamas security forces stormed his Gaza hideout yesterday.
The surviving member of the militant trio believed to have kidnapped and killed pro-Palestinian activist Vittorio Arrigoni was arrested by Hamas forces who captured the house after a fierce firefight, said Hamas security spokesman Ihab Ghussein.
As Hamas forces closed in, the group’s ringleader, Abdel-Rahman Mohammad Breizat, a Jordanian, threw grenades at his two accomplices and then shot himself rather than be taken alive.
Yeah, he's CIA-Duh.
Hamas forces had surrounded the hideout earlier in the day as part of a manhunt for the killers of Arrigoni — an activist living in Gaza since 2008 helping local Palestinians. The 36-year-old’s body was found on Friday, a day after he was kidnapped and after a video showing him beaten and blindfolded surfaced online...
Why would any Palestinian want to do that? Cui bono just as they have world sympathy?
Several relatives of the gunmen as well as a known Salafist preacher arrived at the scene to plead with the suspects to surrender.
After a few hours, Hamas said mediation attempts collapsed and shooting erupted anew. Hamas then banned media from reporting and ordered them away from the scene.
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FLASHBACK:
"Pro-Palestinian Italian found beaten and strangled in Gaza; Captors pressed Hamas to release leader from jail" April 16, 2011|By Joel Greenberg, Washington Post
JERUSALEM — A pro-Palestinian activist from Italy who had been abducted by an extremist group in the Gaza Strip was found strangled to death early yesterday, the first such slaying of a foreigner in the coastal territory ruled by the militant group Hamas.
WHO would want to make Hamas look bad, huh?
The body of Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was discovered by Hamas security forces in an empty house in Gaza City a day after he had been seized, officials said.
Arrigoni had been strangled with a plastic handcuff strip, said Khalil Abu Shamala, director of Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights, who went to the scene with security officials. He said that Arrigoni’s head was bloodied, apparently from being beaten before he was killed.
An Al Qaeda-inspired group calling itself al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, or Monotheism and Holy War, had asserted responsibility for the abduction.
That would be the MOSSAD WING of "Al-CIA-Duh, " right?
The group’s leader, Sheik Abu Walid al-Maqdisi, was arrested last month by Hamas....
Excuse me? Hamas is ARRESTING "Al-CIA-Duh?"
Related: Hamas is "Al-CIA-Duh's" Enemy
Then why are they not our friend?
The kidnappers set a deadline of 5 p.m. yesterday for their leader’s release. But Arrigoni was killed hours before that. Medical findings indicated that Arrigoni was slain in the early morning, apparently when his captors learned that Hamas police were preparing to close in on their hideout, security officials said.
A member of the extremist group who had been arrested and interrogated disclosed the abductors’ location, according to a spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry.
I guess torture works, huh?
The spokesman, Ehab al-Ghussein, denounced the killing as “a crime that does not reflect the values, morals, religion, and customs’’ of the people of Gaza.
Arrigoni, who was also a blogger and wrote for an Italian newspaper, was in Gaza several times over the past 2 ½ years, his associates said. In 2008, he arrived on a boat bringing humanitarian supplies that Israel allowed through despite its naval blockade on Gaza. Arrigoni last returned to the area a year ago, through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
???????
Then WHY WOULD ANY PALESTINIAN want to KILL HIM?
Salafism is inspired by Wahabi Islam, the fundamentalist version of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia.
Then why did AmeriKa attack Afghanistan and Iraq?
Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and other Salafi jihadist groups have challenged Hamas in Gaza, denouncing it for halting rocket attacks against Israel under cease-fire arrangements and for participating in the past in governments with the secular Fatah movement as part of the Palestinian Authority.
Yeah, every time Palestinians might unite these a**holes throw a wrench into the works.
The Salafis have accused Hamas of failing to strictly enforce Islamic law and have attacked Internet cafes, which they view as purveyors of decadent Western culture.
More than a dozen foreign correspondents and aid workers were abducted in Gaza before Hamas seized control in June 2007. They were all released unharmed.
But now that Hamas has control they are being killed?
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