Hamas Co-Founder Dies After Accidentally Shooting Himself In The Head
Hamas co-founder Imad al-Alami Image by Hamas
By Aiden Pink January 31, 2018
One of the founders of the Palestinian terror group Hamas died on Tuesday, three weeks after he was shot in the head in what officials said was an accident.
Imad al-Alami, 62, was inspecting his weapon at home when it accidentally discharged, a Hamas spokesman said earlier this month. He was transferred to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where he remained in critical condition until his death.
Hundreds of Palestinians took part in his funeral procession Tuesday, including many senior Hamas leaders.
“He will not replaced,” a member of the group’s Politburo, Husam Badran, wrote on Facebook.
Alami was Hamas’ first liaison in Iran, and served in that country and Syria starting in the 1980s before returning to Gaza in 2012. He served as deputy Hamas leader from then until last year.
Alami suffered a serious leg injury during the Israel-Hamas war in the summer of 2014, according to the group’s own website, but the circumstances of his injury are mysterious. According to the Times of Israel, he may have been hurt when an elevator collapsed in a tunnel where he was hiding, or injured in a gun battle between Hamas activists. But according to Ynet, his legs were broken by unknown persons, possibly by throwing him from a high place.
Alami’s mysterious injuries in 2014 and 2018 led Israeli and Palestinian media to speculate whether his death was an assassination, suicide, or a genuine accident.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
