A newly revealed transcript of a 1989 questioning of Yahya Sinwar points to the Hamas leader's decades-long history of violence.
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That year, Sinwar was arrested by the Shin Bet security agency in Khan Yunis for the murder of collaborators with Israel.
Video: Israel exposes Hamas network beneath and next to Gaza's hospitals / Credit: Reuters
Sinwar, who was in charge of gathering intelligence about collaborators at the time, surprised investigators when he gave them a tour around Gaza revealing the locations where he had buried the bodies of the collaborators he had murdered.
"I'm ready to tell you everything, from the beginning, things I've done and never talked about," a transcript of the interrogation, which is 10 pages long and is kept in the archives of the Supreme Court, said.
Around three years earlier, in 1986, Sinwar had partnered with the then-head of Hamas Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Yassin had just been released from prison in Israel, 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 Lebanon War were released.
In coordination with Yassin, Sinwar founded a sub-group 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 among ourselves about all kinds of things, and among other things, we also 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 is against the religion and Islam. I knew it was dangerous, so I recruited Rawhi Jamal who could be trusted. He agreed.
"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 the information between us in mailboxes in mosques."
Sinwar told investigators that he later recruited more operatives, mainly from the universities of Gaza, and that the assassinations were approved by Yassin.
Throughout the hours-long questioning, Sinwar provided gruesome details of the murders of collaborators, all of which he committed himself – either by shooting or suffocating the suspect with his own hands.
In one instance, Sinwar surveilled 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 the 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, put him in a large grave I saw, and suffocated him with a rag I had. After strangling him, I wrapped him in a white cloth and closed the grave. I understood from Rasmi that he realized that he deserved to die."
Sinwar also 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 intel, the group killed a Gazan named Adnan Safur, whom Sinwar threatened with a gun and kidnapped.
Following a violent interrogation ("We beat him"), Safur admitted that he had collaborated with Israel, which immediately sealed his faith. "I suffocated him with a keffiyeh, we dug in the place and Rawhi and I buried him there," Sinwar said.
Details of two more murders were provided.
"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 I had in the car we dug a hole. When we finished, we returned to the orchard to take the body and drove to the hole to bury him."
Sinwar and his men's next target was Hussein al-Sir from Khan Yunis, a wealthy man who used to show off his Mercedes car.
"When we found him inside his vehicle, I took out the gun and threatened him. I put the gun to his neck, I told him 'get in my car', and when he got out of his car he started to resist.
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"I pressed the gun to his neck so that he would get in the car, but then a bullet came out and hit him because I left the hatch open. We quickly put him in the car and drove away. We arrived behind a factory, and there we buried the body. After that, we washed the car of the blood and all the marks 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 – having only served 22 years – as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.
While in prison, Sinwar learned Hebrew, and he gained power and popularity within Hamas and became its Gaza leader in February 2017, after defeating Ismail Haniyeh in internal elections.
