Hundreds of Hamas militants accused of committing war crimes during their October 2023 attack could face the death penalty after Israel late Monday approved the creation of a special military tribunal to prosecute their cases.
The legislation received broad backing from both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition and much of the opposition, passing with 93 votes in favor and zero against.
The Israeli parliament on Monday approved in its second and third readings a bill titled the “Prosecution law for the October 7 Massacre.” The legislation creates a dedicated tribunal, operating as a military court, to handle the prosecution of roughly 400 Hamas operatives from the elite Nukhba Force who have been held in Israel since the attack, an Israeli official told CNN. In the October 7 assault led by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controlled the Gaza Strip, attackers killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostage.
The law includes a legal framework that will allow the death penalty for those convicted of genocide. The official said it could take several months until the tribunal is established and proceedings begin.
Yulia Malinovsky, one of the bill’s sponsors and a lawmaker from the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, compared the tribunal to a “modern Eichmann trial,” referring to the 1961 trial of top Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. A key architect of the Holocaust, Eichmann was convicted in a landmark trial in Israel and was executed in 1962, one of only two people to have been executed in Israel’s history.
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