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Israel says Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, killed in major blow to militant group
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that Hamas’ top leader and long-time commander in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by troops during an operation in the decimated Palestinian territory.
In a message the Israeli government said was shared with dozens of other foreign ministers around the world, Katz said Sinwar, “who is responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by IDF soldiers.”
“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and victory for the free world in everything against the evil axis of extreme Islam led by Iran,” said Katz in the statement.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said in a statement Thursday that “justice has been served to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” adding that it was his hope the killing would “result in further progress toward the release of all hostages still held in Gaza, as well as to a ceasefire for Palestinians who have suffered under Hamas’ grip for far too long.”
A photo circulating on social media showed a man resembling the Hamas commander laying dead on a pile of rubble with a gaping head wound, but CBS News could not immediately verify the image. Sinwar had been one of the most wanted figures on Israel’s target list since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border terror attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” the IDF said earlier Thursday.
Who was Yahya Sinwar
Sinwar, 61, was accused by Israel of orchestrating the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. He had remained in hiding in Gaza since that massacre was carried out.
He was named as the overall leader of Hamas in August, following the assassination of its former political chief Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Iran. Before that he had led the group as its top commander in Gaza since 2017. He was considered a ruthless militant commander with close ties to Hamas’ biggest benefactor, Iran.
According to CBS News’ partner network BBC News, Sinwar was born in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. His parents had lived in Ashkelon, which is now southern Israel, but they were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced in the war that followed Israel’s founding in 1948.
Speaking during a 2021 news conference in Gaza, after a previous 10-day round of violence between Hamas and Israel, Sinwar told international journalists “the best gift the occupation leaders [Israel] can give me is assassinating me, because since childhood, I was raised in a way that taught me to sacrifice my life for this country.”
“We are not lovers of killing and death, but we are a people who need our rights given back to us,” he said. “If this is secured through popular, nonviolent resistance and international diplomacy then that is preferable, but if we are forced to use the most dangerous means, then we are ready, and our people we will not hesitate to use any means whatsoever to earn their rights.”
Israel’s steady elimination of Hamas leaders
The IDF has killed dozens of commanders and hundreds of fighters belonging to Hamas, long designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Israel and many other countries, since Israel launched its blistering war in Gaza in immediate retaliation for Oct. 7 attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed since the beginning of the war that no senior Hamas figure would escape — and there was none more senior in Gaza than Sinwar.
Haniyeh, who spent decades living in exile in Qatar, was assassinated in Iran’s capital in late July after attending the inauguration of that country’s new president. Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for the brazen assassination in Tehran, but U.S. officials told CBS News at the time that it was an Israeli strike.
Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza in July, according to the IDF.
“There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and it is beside Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7th terrorists,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in an interview over the summer. “That is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.”
Israel’s top coordinator for hostages and the missing told CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer in September that the Israeli government was prepared to offer Sinwar and his family safe passage out of Gaza if Hamas agreed to relinquish control of Gaza and allow the return of the remaining 101 hostages.
“It would be the end of the war, as [the hostages] will be recovered,” Israeli negotiator Gal Hirsch told CBS News at the time. Sinwar never issued a reply to the Israeli proposal.
Israeli hostage families react
Even before his death was confirmed by the IDF, the Israeli Hostages Families Forum said in a statement that his killing was an achievement, but that only the return of their loved ones could be considered a victory.
“The Hostages Families Forum commends the security forces for eliminating Sinwar, who masterminded the greatest massacre our country has ever faced, responsible for the murder of thousands and the abduction of hundreds,” the group said. “However, we express deep concern for the fate of the 101 men, women, elderly and children still held captive by Hamas in Gaza. We call on the Israeli government, world leaders, and mediating countries to leverage the military achievement into a diplomatic one by pursuing an immediate agreement for the release of all 101 hostages: the living for rehabilitation and the murdered for proper burial.”
Of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza, Israeli intelligence suggests 64 are still alive.
Sinwar’s killing was announced hours after more than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, that was sheltering displaced people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
contributed to this report.
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Kamala Harris reacts to Yahya Sinwar’s killing
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Texas execution is latest death penalty case to proceed despite shifting stances by law enforcement and prosecutors
Texas is planning to execute a death row inmate Thursday whose case has drawn widespread scrutiny, as doubts linger over whether his decades-old criminal conviction would stand up in court today — and whether he even committed the offense that back then was considered a crime.
Robert Roberson, 57, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday for killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in 2002. Roberson, who has maintained his innocence, would become the first person in the United States put to death for a murder conviction tied to shaken baby syndrome if the execution goes ahead as planned.
His case is the latest in a string of instances where officials and prosecutors integral to the conviction and sentence of a condemned person have backpedaled on their original position about the individual’s guilt or punishment.
Roberson’s death sentence sparked controversy as it revived debate about shaken baby syndrome, a condition known in the medical community as abusive head trauma. It occurs when an inflicted head injury, caused by an adult forcefully shaking an infant or young toddler, results in serious brain damage that can be fatal. Many professionals in the fields of science and medicine now argue such a diagnosis is questionable and deeply flawed, because the definitions of shaken baby syndrome are vague and inconsistent, often overlapping with symptoms of other diseases that manifest on their own.
“We need to reconsider the diagnostic criteria, if not the existence, of shaken baby syndrome,” researchers wrote in a 2004 paper on the condition published in The British Medical Journal. As more evidence to support points like theirs infiltrated mainstream medicine, at least dozens of people in the U.S. convicted of crimes linked to shaken baby syndrome were exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
As the science around shaken baby syndrome evolved, attorneys for Roberson have raised concerns about the legitimacy of his daughter’s diagnosis and how it influenced the jury’s guilty verdict. Evidence brought to light since then indicates the baby died from undetected pneumonia that developed into sepsis, and likely turned fatal after she was prescribed medication that would have hindered her ability to breathe, the attorneys said in court filings.
Compounding questions about the infant’s diagnosis is broad skepticism over the fairness of Roberson’s case. Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated the death of Roberson’s daughter in east Texas city of Palestine, helped convict him. Wharton now advocates vocally for the courts to review his conviction, citing changes in how science understands shaken baby syndrome and how law enforcement understands Roberson.
Wharton has said openly he believes Roberson is an innocent man.
“For 20 years, I have thought that something went very wrong and justice was not served,” Wharton wrote in an opinion editorial for The Dallas Morning News in May. “I am asking for those who care deeply about justice to urge another look at this case.”
At the time of his arrest for murder, Roberson’s autism was undiagnosed. Wharton said in court filings that his team used Roberson’s behavior after the baby’s death as an indication of his guilt and a reason to charge him, but they would have viewed those actions differently had they known about his disorder. Furthermore, a substantial part of Texas’ argument for Roberson’s guilt hinged on the testimony of a nurse who claimed his daughter showed signs of sexual abuse, and that testimony has since been debunked.
Other recent death penalty cases clouded by doubts
Similar situations unfolded in two other capital punishment cases in the last three weeks alone, with one ending in an execution despite uncertainty about the inmate’s innocence and public calls from authorities to review his case. In September, Marcellus Williams died by lethal injection in Missouri after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell pushed to have his conviction overturned, in light of new evidence that DNA on the murder weapon belonged to someone else, not Williams, and the fact that racial bias may have influenced his trial.
“Marcellus Williams should be alive today,” Bell said in a statement after Williams was executed. “There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option.”
That argument echoes attorneys’ defense of Richard Glossip, an inmate on death row in Oklahoma, whose bid to block his ninth scheduled execution from happening and receive a new trial is being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Glossip’s conviction also hinged on questionable evidence, and an Oklahoma appellate court described fundamental elements of the state’s original case against him as “extremely weak.”
Glossip’s case has garnered national attention as the Oklahoma’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, rallied against his imminent execution in court filings and pushed for a new trial. Drummond in court filings has argued serious errors marred Glossip’s previous trial and may have swayed the verdict, including evidence suppression and false testimony from the prosecution’s key witness.
“Our system of justice places awesome powers and responsibilities in the hands of prosecutors,” Drummond wrote in one filing to the Supreme Court. “When those prosecutors themselves recognize that they have overstepped, that judgment cannot be dismissed as just another litigation position.”
Glossip’s fate still hangs in the balance. Roberson’s potentially could, too, after a last-minute subpoena late Wednesday called him to testify before a Texas House committee that is examining the lawfulness of his murder conviction.
Most members of the state’s Republican-led House of Representatives previously called for a stay of Roberson’s execution, referencing a “junk science” law that should allow Texas prisoners to appeal their convictions based on scientific developments that could impact the evidence used to convict them. (The law was central to an appeal from Andrew Roark, a Texas man convicted in 2000 of injuring a child by shaking, who has been granted a new trial by the Texas Supreme Court.)
The state’s Department of Criminal Justice has not announced whether the execution will be postponed for the House committee hearing. A spokesperson for TDCJ told CBS News Wednesday night the department “has not seen the subpoena for inmate Roberson.”
“Should one be issued by the legislative committee and after we have an opportunity to review it, the agency will consult with the Office of Attorney General on the appropriate next steps,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Texas prosecutors urged the U.S. Supreme Court in a filing Wednesday evening to reject an emergency appeal brought by Roberson’s legal team in the wake of an earlier decision from the state’s pardon and parole board, which denied his request for clemency in a vote that recommended against delaying the lethal injection or commuting his sentence to life imprisonment.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s authority to grant clemency depends on the board’s recommendation, and their decision for Roberson means his hands are effectively tied without the court’s intervention. Abbott could still grant a 30-day reprieve without the board recommending it, but only once per case. The governor has commuted just one death sentence since taking office more than nine years ago, and in that time authorized 73 executions, more than any state in the country.