International Solidarity Movement - Page 304 - Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.

Israeli forces arrest and hold 13-year-old for seven hours

20th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Bruqin, Occupied Palestine

On Tuesday 18^thMarch, Israeli forces entered the village of Bruqin and arrested 13-year-old Abdel Hafez Mohammed, holding him for seven hours before releasing him later in the day.

Abdel Hafez Mohammed Samara was working on his land, picking ‘aqoub’ (a local plant), and allowing his sheep to grave, when an Israeli soldier and two security guards called him to the closest road, which is nearby the illegal settlement of Ariel.

Abdel went to speak to the soldier and the security staff and he was told to throw away the small broken knife that he had been using to cut away the aqoub. He was then forced to kneel down, while guns were pointed directly at him. At that moment, Walid Samara, a local teacher who had been working in the nearby village of Hares stopped on the road close to Abdel. He was threatened at gunpoint and then beaten as two Israeli police officers arrived to arrest him and Abdel.

The police officer then accused Abdel of threatening the guards with his knife, and Walid of attacking them with stones. They were both taken to a nearby checkpoint, Walid was then released but Abdel was taken to the police station in the illegal settlement of Ariel.

Abdel was then interrogated for four hours before his father was called. Once his father arrived, he was able to see his son, but not allowed to say anything during the interrogation. The Israeli police took fingerprints from both Abdel and his father before forcing them both to sign conditions saying that did not have the right to go back to the land to graze their sheep or to cut aqoub.

Israeli forces are increasingly intimidating, beating and arresting Palestinians, and the arrest of children is unfortunately common. In the second half of February alone, Israeli forces arrested 31 children. According to recent figures by the Prisoners’ Affairs Ministry, as many as 187 Palestinian children remain jailed in Israeli prisons on various charges.

The remains of martyr Ahmad Saleh finally returned to family

20th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Asira al-Qibliya, Occupied Palestine

In June 2002, Israeli soldiers assassinated 18-year-old Ahmad Saleh from the village of Asira al-Qibliya after he entered the illegal settlement of Yizhar.

Ahmad’s body was then convicted post mortem to be held for 20 years by the Israeli authorities. Today, twelve years later, the body was given back to the family and was finally able to be buried with dignity.

Two other martyrs’ bodies were also returned to their families yesterday and their funerals began in the morning from a local hospital in Nablus, and continued on to the centre of the city. The funeral procession for Ahmad Saleh continued to his home village of Asira al-Qibliya, with approximately 700 Palestinians in attendance.

For the past 12 years the martyrs’ bodies have been held inside one of the ‘cemeteries of numbers’, which are secret cemeteries in closed military areas with bare graves surrounded by stones. Each ‘grave’ has only an identification number on a metal plate; family members are not allowed to visit.

There are at least 300 known Palestinian martyrs from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip whose bodies are withheld within one of these ‘cemeteries of numbers’, with more remaining in Israeli morgues.

15-year-old boy murdered by Israeli forces

20th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

Early yesterday morning, 15-year-old Yousef Shawamri was shot dead by Israeli soldiers near the village of Deir Al-Asal al Fauqa.

Yousef and two of his friends were trying to pass though a hole in a wire fence to reach Palestinian land that has been stolen by the Annexation Wall, in order to collect vegetables for their families. The soldiers shot Yousef three times in the chest at close range resulting in his death. His two friends were shot in their legs and later arrested. In the past, children have crossed the Apartheid Wall at this point to collect food from the stolen land, but this is the first death.

Yousef’s body was returned to his home in the afternoon. The villagers of Deir Al-Asal al Fauqa are very close and describe themselves as coming from the same family. When Yousef was returned he was carried on the shoulders of his brothers into the local school grounds so that his people could pray and show their respect. His body was then carried; to be laid to rest on a hillside while his neighbours came out from their houses to pay their respects.

The internationally condemned Apartheid Wall imprisons the West Bank and directly affects may communities’ throughout Palestine. It runs for 420 kilometres, and has stolen 12% of the West Bank. Under the Oslo Interim Agreement a further 60% of the West Bank has been lost due to many illegal settlements and the military control of the Israeli army. Israeli forces have murdered 1519 Palestinian children since September 2000, an average of 1 child killed every 3 days.

Prisoner released leads to celebrations in Awarta

18th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Awarta, Occupied Palestine

Yesterday in the village of Awarta, 26-year-old Rais Abdat was released from an Israeli prison.

Three years ago, two youths from Awarta killed a settler from the nearby illegal settlement of Itemar, and for this act they both received five life sentences. In response, Israeli forces arrested approximately 18 young men and women from the village. Rais Abdat was one of these men.

Rais was not convicted of the crime he was arrested for, yet he was sentenced to 38 months in prison. A member of his family believes this is due to his activism and political affiliations.

10 of the men and women arrested three years ago remain imprisoned, included Rais’ cousin Walid Abdat (24-years-old) who is due to be released in July.

Today Rais was released from Salem Court in Jenin to joyous reactions from his friends and family.

Although he has now been released, Rais has lost three years of his life due to the Israeli occupation. Before he was imprisoned Rais was a university student studying Arabic, as a family member commented, he will return to his studies although it may take some time to adjust to his newfound freedom.

According to Addameer (Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association) as of January 1^st 2014 there are currently 5,023 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centres. This includes 155 administrative detainees, 17 women and 154 children.

One year on: the Hares Boys

18th March 2014 | The Hares Boys | Occupied Palestine

Yesterday the Hares Boys, who are being charged with 20 counts of attempted murder with no evidence whatsoever, have been in an Israeli prison for one year. Now is more important than ever to fully understand the circumstances surrounding the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of Mohammad Suleiman, Ammar Souf, Mohammed Kleib, Tamer Souf, and Ali Shamlawi.

The car accident

At around 18:30 on Thursday 14 March 2013, a car crashed into the back of a truck on Road 5 in Salfit Governorate, occupied Palestine. The driver and her 3 daughters were injured, one of them – seriously. The driver, Adva Biton, was going back to the illegal Israeli settler colony of Yakir when the accident occurred. She later claimed the accident was due to Palestinian youth throwing stones at her car. The driver of the truck, having testified immediately after the accident that he had pulled over because of a flat tyre, later changed his mind and said he had seen stones by the road.

There were no witnesses to the car accident. Nobody had seen any children or youth throwing stones that day.

The arrests

In the early hours of Friday 15 March 2013, masked Israeli soldiers, some with attack dogs, stormed the village of Hares, which is close to Road 5. More than 50 soldiers broke the doors of the villagers’ houses, demanding the whereabouts of their teenage sons. Ten boys were arrested that night, blindfolded, handcuffed, and transferred to an unknown location. The families were not informed of their sons’ alleged wrongdoings.

Two days later, a second wave of violent arrests took place. At around 3 o’clock in the morning, the Israeli army, accompanied by the Shabak (the Israeli secret service), entered the homes of 3 Palestinian adolescents. They had a piece of paper with their names in Hebrew. After forcing all the family members into one room, taking away their phones so that they wouldn’t call for help, and interrogating them, the soldiers handcuffed their sons, all aged 16-17.

“Kiss and hug your mother goodbye,” a Shabak agent told one boy. “You may never see her again.”

A week later, Israeli army jeeps again entered the village and arrested several boys, who had just come back home from school. The soldiers lined all of them up, including a 6-year-old, and threatened at gunpoint their uncle who pleaded for the soldiers to at least release the youngest children. The army then randomly chose 3 boys, handcuffed them behind their backs, blindfolded them, and took them away. The families were not informed about either the allegations against their children, or their exact location.

In total, 19 boys from the neighbouring villages of Hares and Kifl Hares were arrested in relation to the settler car accident. None of them had previously had any history of stone-throwing. After violent interrogations, most of the minors were released, except for five, who remain in Megiddo, an Israeli adult prison.

These are the Hares Boys.

The interrogation

The arrested boys were subjected to a series of abuse and ill-treatment that accounts as torture. Upon detention, they were kept in solitary confinement for up to two weeks. One boy, since released, described his cell: a windowless hole 1m wide and 2m long; there was no mattress or blanket to sleep on; toilet facilities were dirty; the six lights were kept on continuously, leading to the boy losing track of the time of the day; the food made him feel ill. The boy was denied lawyer; he was interrogated violently three times during three days, and eventually released after found not guilty at the trial.

Other boys have also told their lawyers of very similar treatment. They “confessed” of stone-throwing after being repeatedly abused in prison and during interrogations.

The charges

The five boys from Hares are charged with 25 counts of attempted murder each, apparently 1 count for every alleged stone thrown at passing cars. The Israeli military prosecution insists that the boys consciously “intended to kill”; the boys can face the maximum punishment for attempted murder: 25 years to life imprisonment.

The prosecution’s case relies on the boys’ “confessions”, which have been obtained under torture, and 61 “witnesses,” some of which claim that their cars have been damaged by stones on that same day on Road 5. The latter only appeared after the car accident got a lot of media coverage as a “terrorist act”, and the Israeli prime minister Benyamin Natanyahu announced, after the boys’ arrest, that he “caught the terrorists that did it”. Other “witnesses” include the police and the Shabak, who were not even present at that location at the time. It is not clear whether the 61 “witnesses” have been properly questioned and their claims verified with, for example, hospital admission data, or even if the alleged damage to their vehicles has been photographed or otherwise documented. Such information is not even available to the boys’ attorneys.

The implications

If the boys are convicted, this case would set a legal precedent which would allow the Israeli military to convict any Palestinian child or youngster for attempted murder in cases of stone-throwing.

The boys are now 16-17 years old. If the Israeli military get their way, the boys would only return to their homes and their families at the age of 41 – at best. Five young lives ruined with no evidence of their guilt is a spit in the face to our common principles of justice as human beings.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS?

Almost every stage of this case that could go wrong, did. Local and international law has been mostly dismissed; principles of justice barely fading in the horizon; respect for human beings non-existent.

Consider this:

The Hares Boys, as well as thousands of other Palestinian youngsters, are treated in the Israeli military court system as adults. According to international human rights law in general, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in particular, adults are people over 18 years of age. Israel treats even 9-year-olds as adults.
The racist system of “justice”: no matter the alleged crime, Palestinians are forced to go through the military courts and are tried under military law, while Israelis fall into the civil court system for the same crimes.
Violently arresting children at night without giving any explanation to their families about the reasons behind it, nor informing them about their children’s whereabouts goes against Israel’s own laws which state that minors are to be accompanied by an adult family member when detained or arrested.
The denial of lawyer for several days (in some cases weeks) after detention also accounts as a major violation of Israel’s own rules.
Children being put into solitary confinement for days on end is a form of torture; It is a severe punishment before the verdict.
Abusive interrogations of scared minors is considered torture.
The boys were arrested despite a total lack of evidence against them and condemned by the Israeli media as “terrorists”, which goes against the universal presumption of innocence (innocent until found guilty) and delivers a guilty verdict in the highly bombastic public trial, putting pressure on the judges to do likewise.