31 Given the fact that the Public Passports Directorate of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior is the competent and responsible department for issuing Palestinian passports in accordance with the laws of issuance and renewal, the complainants hereof have the right to obtain passports without delay. It is worth mentioning that the security agencies do not have jurisdiction or the legal power to interfere with any passports’ issuance. The Gaza Strip 1.Use of Death Penalty The courts in the Gaza Strip continued to impose the death penalty, sentencing 15 persons to death in 2010. Four of these sentences were imposed by civil courts and 9 by military courts. Further, the Government in the Gaza Strip carried out 5 death sentences in 2010, executing five citizens in contradiction of the Palestinian Amended Basic Law, which stipulates that death sentences imposed by civil or military courts shall not be carried out without the approval of the PNA’s President. The execution of these death sentences was concomitant with several legal contraventions highlighted by ICHR on different occasions. The most serious contravention committed by the Government in Gaza hereof was carrying out death sentences without approval by the President of the PNA. According to Article 109 of the Palestinian Amended Basic Law: “Without approval by the President of the PNA, death sentences imposed by courts shall not be carried out”. ICHR believes that imposing death sentences by Palestinian courts, particularly, military courts, constitutes a grave violation of the right to life and fair trial. Although the death penalty is not banned according to International Human Rights Law, it is considered as a grave and unjustified violation of the basic right to life and non‐deterrent penalty which the international community works to obliterate and replace with other penalties complying with the criminal philosophy based on the principle of reformation. 2.Arbitrary Detention ICHR received during 2010 several complaints on arbitrary detention conducted without due process. The Ministry of the Interior in the Gaza Strip has taken no