Hamas operative indicted for allegedly holding Oron Shaul’s body in fridge in Gaza

Ibrahim Hilu said to have hidden remains of the 20-year-old IDF soldier, killed in 2014 war, until they were recovered by the IDF in January 2025

Hamas operative Ibrahim Hilu was charged Thursday in Israeli court for holding the body of slain soldier Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul in the Gaza Strip for over a decade on behalf of the terror group.

The 46-year-old Gaza resident was indicted in the Beersheba District Court on charges of aiding the enemy in war, membership in a terrorist organization and using a gun for terrorist aims.

Shaul, 20 at the time of his death, was killed in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood during the 2014 Gaza War when the armored personnel carrier he was traveling in came under fire from anti-tank missiles launched by Hamas.

His body was dragged away from the scene by Hamas operatives and subsequently held in Gaza for over a decade.

State prosecutors allege that Hilu, a shopkeeper formerly active in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, was enlisted by his higher-ups to hold Shaul’s body in a large meat freezer in the basement of one of his businesses in Gaza City.

He was instructed to distance himself from the terror group’s military activity so as to not call attention to himself, and according to the indictment, he later transferred Shaul’s body to a fridge with a lock.

Hilu held Shaul’s body until October 2023, when he fled south during the fighting in Gaza and relocated to a displaced persons camp in Deir al-Balah.

Israeli forces captured and interrogated Hilu, who provided information on the whereabouts of Shaul’s remains. He has been in Israeli custody since then.

Shortly before a ceasefire went into effect on January 18, 2025, a Palestinian informant working on Israeli orders extracted Shaul’s body from the fridge, wrapped it in a rug, and carried it for 1.5 kilometers (roughly one mile) to IDF forces awaiting him, according to a Ynet report.

Israeli forces engineered the recovery of Shaul’s remains in a clandestine operation the following day, just ahead of the ceasefire taking effect.

Shaul was one of two soldiers whose bodies had been held since the 2014 war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge. Hadar Goldin, 23 at the time of his death, was killed in Gaza during a humanitarian ceasefire.

Goldin’s remains were returned last November as part of a US-brokered hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas that saw the return of all the terror group’s hostages, living and dead, and ended most of the fighting in the Strip sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.