GAZA CITY - The democratically elected Hamas movement on Tuesday charged that the brother of one of the Palestinian group's chief spokesmen was tortured to death in an Egyptian prison.
"Yusef Abu Zuhri, 38, the brother of Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, was martyred in an Egyptian prison as a result of torture," Fawzi Barhum, the other main spokesman for the group, said.
He added Abu Zuhri, a Hamas member, had been arrested by Egyptian security services in April but declined to provide further details.
Sami Abu Zuhri said his brother died from weeks of "brutal torture in an Egyptian prison" that led to severe bleeding.
He added his brother was briefly treated at Egypt's Alexandria University hospital but was returned to his cell before the bleeding had been stanched.
Egypt has been brokering Palestinian unity talks for several months and has been trying to get Hamas and their Fatah party rivals to sign on to a reconciliation agreement later this month.
Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas's win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.
Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.
Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Palestinian East Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Egyptians protest at Algeria's Cairo embassy