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Human Rights Watch called for an independent inquiry into Monday night's killings of two Palestinian men, `Iyad al-Battat and Nadir al-Massalmah.

On Tuesday Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh described the deaths as the result of a "contract" by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), implying that the killings were extrajudicial executions and that there was no effort to detain the suspects for prosecution. Israeli officials suspected that al-Battat was an Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) activist involved in a January 1999 attack that killed an Israeli border policeman.

"Killings such as these are abhorrent," said Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division. "Israeli officials should condemn these acts, not brag about them."

According to the Associated Press, Deputy Minister Sneh told Israeli radio that "there is an automatic contract on anyone from Hamas who commits murderous attacks....I had said that within a year those attackers would die and see, it took less than a year."

Human Rights Watch has in the past documented a pattern of unlawful use of lethal force by Israeli security forces against "wanted" Palestinian activists, including a book-length study of twenty killings during 1992 and the first two months of 1993.

More recently, Human Rights Watch questioned Israel's use of force in the September 10, 1998 killing of suspected HAMAS activists `Adel and `Imad `Awadallah. Israeli Major General Moshe Yaalon responded to allegations that the `Awadallah killings had been political assassinations by saying "They tried to shoot the [police] dogs and our men killed them." The details of the killings have never been made public. Israel destroyed the house where the killings took place and has refused to return the bodies to the family. These are acts of collective punishment illegal under international law.

Human Rights Watch called on Israel to appoint an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the circumstances of both the al-Battat and al-Massalmah killings and the earlier `Awadallah killings, and to make public its findings. The commission's mandate should include the power to recommend prosecution of individuals who ordered assassinations or otherwise contributed to wrongful deaths.

"The architects of extrajudicial executions, and those who pull the triggers, must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," said Megally.

Human Rights also urged that the bodies of these and twenty-two other so called "enemy dead" be returned to their families.

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