Gay Palestinian Kidnapped from Israeli Safe House, Beheaded & Dismembered in Hebron

A shocking video shows the dismembered body of 25-year-old Ahmed Hacham Hamdi Abu Marakhia, a Palestinian citizen who fled to Israel about two years ago after his sexual identity was revealed.

By: World Israel News Staff

A 25-year-old gay man who fled the Palestinian Authority after his sexual orientation was revealed was kidnapped and brutally beheaded in Hebron, Israel’s N12 news site reported.

News of the death of Ahmed Hakm Hamdi Abu Markhia came late Wednesday night, with footage of his body being carried in the Palestinian section of the city, a hotbed of terrorism.

In a horrifying video that was circulated on social media and is gaining momentum mainly in the PA territories and in Jordan, his dismembered body is seen lying on the side of the road, the report said.

A few hours before the murder on Wednesday, according to N12, Ahmed left for work from a safe house in the Greater Tel Aviv Area, where he was staying.

By evening, the first reports of his death were already received, and his friends believe he was abducted and taken to the Palestinian Authority-administered territories.

Palestinian police are investigating the incident, but his friends feel certain that the reason for the murder was his sexual orientation.

“The General Prosecutor’s Office and the police have opened an investigation into the circumstances of the murder,” Al-Bait Al-Mokhtalef — a safe house for LGBTQ+ Palestinians and Arab Israelis, where the victim resided — said in a statement Thursday morning, adding that a suspect was arrested.

“We are shocked,” Rita Petrenko, CEO of the safe house, told the Hebrew news site.

Petrenko had helped Markhia obtain a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration to live in Israel as well as assisting him to relocate to third country.

“He was so looking forward to leaving. He was next in line to emigrate…

“The only solution for Palestinian LGBT asylum seekers is to resettle in other countries,” she stated.

“Unfortunately, recently this process has become very slow, mainly because of the policy of Canada, the main country we work with. If they had hurried there, his life would have been saved.”

According to his friends in Israel, the report continues, his family expressed astonishment and sadness at his death, and it appears that another family in Hebron was responsible for the murder.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, & transgender (LGBT) people in Palestinian controlled areas of Judea and Samaria  face legal challenges and discrimination not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Wikipedia reported that according to Amnesty International’s 2020 report on Palestine, “Section 152 of the Penal Code in Gaza criminalizes [male] consensual same-sex sexual activity and makes it punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.”

In 2019, the Palestinian Authority (i.e. West Bank) police banned the activities of queer and feminist rights organization Al Qaws, requesting that residents report ‘suspicious’ activities. The ban was later withdrawn by the end of the month following backlash.

Wikipedia also reported that in 2013, a gay Palestinian man told reporters that “local Palestinian Authority police are aware and keep files on him and other homosexuals, blackmailing them into working as spies and informants.” He reported stories “of guys being called at random and told to come into [Palestinian Authority] police stations, with threats their families would be told about their sexuality if they didn’t show up.”

In February 2016, the armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas (classified as a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, the EU, Canada, Israel, Japan and USA)[ which rules Gaza executed Mahmoud Ishtiwi – one of the group’s leading commanders – under allegations of gay sex and theft, as was reported by Wikipedia. Ishtiwi left two wives and three children.

(WorldIsraelNews.com)