GAZA - A Gaza military court convicted four Palestinians on Monday for kidnapping and murdering an Italian man in 2011, a case that shocked Palestinian sympathizers around the world.
Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian activist, was abducted by a Jihadist Salafi faction, which shares the radical ideology of al Qaeda and is a rival of the Hamas Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip.
The group had hoped to force Hamas to release a Salafist leader, Hisham al-Saidni. Hamas police said the kidnappers killed Arrigoni before a deadline they had set for Saidni's release had expired.
Arriogni's killing horrified international pro-Palestinian activists and tested Hamas's authority in the enclave, which it seized from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's allies in a brief civil war in 2007.
