MORE DEATH SENTENCES FOR PALESTINIAN COLLABORATORS

a demonstration to call on Arafat to stop executions in the Middle East will be held outside Palazzo Chigi in Rome tomorrow as the Palestinian Authority President meets Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The protest, which kicks off at 10.00 CET, is prompted by the death sentences handed out to three Palestinian men accused of collaborating with Israel over the killing in December of a senior Fatah official.
The Palestinian Authority security court in Nablus sentenced Samir Abu-Zeina, 21, Amjad Hafarza, 28, and Hussein Abu-Alayoun, 32, to death by firing squad. A fourth man, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, 17, escaped the death penalty because he was a minor, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. A fifth, Husan Afif Khalil, was released because he was found to have been mentally unstable.
The five men were accused of treason and collaboration with Israeli intelligence services, and aiding in the assassination of Thabet Thabet in the West Bank City of Tulkarm. Thabet was gunned down outside his home on December 31, 2000.
At a court hearing in Nablus on Saturday, one of the five accused admitted sending a message on his mobile telephone to an Israeli intelligence officer telling him when Thabet left home on the day of his killing. The other four had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The verdicts were passed after a rushed 10-minute hearing, held after an Israeli missile attack on a building in the town in which eight Palestinians died, including two senior Hamas leaders and two children.
After the sentences were read out, spectators in the packed chamber shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) while outside the court gunmen fired their rifles into the air.
Nablus Governor Mahmud Aloul said sentencing the collaborators on the day when the attack took place would serve as a deterrent to possible collaborators. It would also allow the verdict to be publicised ahead of the funerals of the Hamas victims of the Israeli attack.
Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated and clashed with police across the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday, enraged at the latest Israeli attack on militants and demanding revenge.
In the village of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, three masked men killed a 57-year-old Palestinian with a bullet to the head on Tuesday night for alleged collaboration with Israel, Palestinian security sources said.
The death sentences passed down in Nablus, which are to be carried out by firing squad, must still be ratified by Arafat.
In January, the Palestinian Authority executed two convicted collaborators, a move that provoked heavy international criticism.