RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Palestinian security officials in the West Bank denied accusations on Monday by their Islamist rivals that a man who died in their custody had been killed by President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed forces. Officials from Hamas, the Islamist group which runs the Gaza Strip, described 30-year-old Mohammed Adbel-Jamil al-Hajj as one of its members in Jenin and said his death by hanging on Sunday in a jail in the northern West Bank city was a political murder. Officials from Abbas's Preventive Security Force, which runs the detention facility, said Hajj committed suicide. An autopsy report was expected later on Monday. "We strongly deny he was tortured," Preventive Security spokesman Mohammed Abu Nabhan said. "He had been arrested two days earlier. He had previously been arrested for illegal possession of weapons and belonging to an outlawed armed group." Hamas and Abbas's secular Fatah faction have been at daggers drawn since Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006. Since Hamas routed Fatah forces in Gaza in 2007, Hamas has run Gaza and Fatah the West Bank. Each accuses the other of persecuting and killing its members in the other territory -- allegations supported by independent human rights monitors. An uncle of the dead man, Mohayeldeen al-Hajj, told Reuters: "What do you expect them to say about someone who was killed in their custody? Would they admit that they killed him? "He had been jailed five times and he was tortured severely each time. Why would he hang himself this time? ... The Palestinian Authority and Preventive Security are responsible for his killing. They jailed him because he was Hamas." In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said: "The crime of torturing Mohammed al-Hajj to death at the hands of the West Bank security service will have grave consequences and was an attempt to blow up all reconciliation efforts." He said devout Muslims like Hamas members abhorred suicide. Clerics have said suicide bombings were permissible because they involve killing the enemy. Two weeks ago, relatives accused Hamas in Gaza of killing Fatah supporter Osama Atallah and Fatah officials in the coastal enclave accused Hamas of killing several party members during Israel's 3-week offensive in the strip last month. (Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, writing by Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to http://blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)
Graffiti is seen on a wall in the Samouni family house in Gaza City February 8, 2009. During Israel's 22-day land, air and sea assault on the impoverished Gaza Strip, the ...
