Shocka: Terrorists Guilty of Human Rights Violations

Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 1:36:17 pm PDT

A bulletin from the Department of the Blindingly Obvious: Study: Both Hamas and Fatah guilty of human rights violations.

Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah have both carried out serious human rights abuses over the past year, including arbitrary arrests and torture, according to a report on the bitter power struggle between the groups.

Human Rights Watch, in the report released on Wednesday, cited a pattern of politically motivated arrests, mock executions and severe beatings in detention centers run by Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in the West Bank.

It faulted the United States and other donors, who have bankrolled Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Fatah-dominated security forces, for “not paying adequate attention to the systematic abuses by those forces.”