Last update - 00:00 10/07/2007
Gaza parliamentary official says was detained by Hamas gunmen
By Reuters
A top official with the Palestinian parliament in the Gaza Strip said on Tuesday that he had been detained by Hamas gunmen and questioned for hours about why he went to work on a day that Hamas had decreed a day of rest.
Izz el-Deen al-Sharif, director general of the parliament office in Gaza, said gunmen who identified themselves as members of Hamas's Executive Force roused him from his bed Tuesday morning, and took him to an interrogation facility where he was questioned for three hours.
He said the gunmen suggested he was encouraging his fellow government workers to follow Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' decrees instead of the decree issued by Hamas.
Sharif is a supporter of Abbas' secular Fatah faction. Hamas routed the Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip last month, and began imposing a new order in the enclave after days of violent civil war between the rival factions.
Sharif said at issue were Abbas' new guidelines for the work-week. Abbas' emergency government in the West Bank set Sunday to Thursday as working days with Friday and Saturday as the days of rest. The Hamas government in Gaza, however, has decreed the work-week to begin on Saturday and end on Wednesday.
Hamas has rejected Abbas' dismissal of the unity government they formed last March, describing the establishment of an emergency cabinet as a coup.
"They asked questions about our work [schedule] and the fact that we take Friday and Saturday off and not Thursday and Friday," Sharif told the news agency Reuters. "Their questions sounded as if they accused me of inciting employees to obey the orders of the emergency government."
"They also said I was inciting against Hamas ... and the Executive Force and requested an apology, and I said, 'I cannot apologize for something I did not do,'" he said.
Some Fatah officials and human rights groups have accused the Executive Force of secretly holding Fatah prisoners in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has denied this along with accounts by some Fatah security men that they had been tortured by Hamas fighters who came to detain and disarm them.
Security forces loyal to Abbas have detained, in some cases only briefly, at least 299 Hamas supporters in the West Bank since the Islamist group seized control of Gaza, according to Hamas officials.
Fatah-dominated security sources have confirmed dozens of arrests in the West Bank. Senior Abbas aides have dismissed suggestions detainees may have been harmed.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which is based in Gaza, accused Abbas on Tuesday of issuing orders that "lay the foundations for a military dictatorship".