Senior Hamas terrorist Ibrahim Hamad was sentenced to 54 life terms in prison on Sunday. Hamad was the Judea and Samaria head of Hamas’s terrorist operations from 2001 to 2006, and coordinated attacks in which 46 people were murdered and more than 400 were wounded.
Hamad, 47, was released for prison in 2001 and immediately returned to terrorism. He was arrested again five years later after a lengthy manhunt.
In 2003 his home was destroyed and his wife and children were expelled from Judea and Samaria and sent to Jordan.
Hamad was convicted of planning, coordinating and assisting in the perpetration of several attacks. Among the bombings he planned was the 2001 bombing in Jerusalem’s Kikar Tzion (Zion Square) in which 11 people were murdered, nine of them teenagers.
Another bombing he plotted was carried out in Jerusalem just three months later. The attack targeted Café Moment in Rehavia. Eleven people ages 22-31 were killed, and another 54 people were wounded.
He hit Jerusalem again in July 2002, this time targeting Hebrew University in an attack that murdered nine people, five of them United States citizens. Roughly 100 people were wounded.
He planned several other terrorist attacks as well, some of which were thwarted. He was arrested in 2006 and has been in jail since then.
Hamad did not offer arguments in his defense, saying only that he did not recognize the court’s authority.