Tag: Child prisoner

Ahed Tamimi Returns Before Israeli Show Trial

 

11th February 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Occupied Palestine

On Tuesday morning, Ahed Tamimi once again was brought before an Israeli military court at the Ofer Military Prison. Despite objections from the Tamimi family and Ahed’s lawyer, all media and foreign diplomats were barred from entering the court room during the trial. The prosecution read the 12 charges against Ahed, to which she declined to respond. The 17 year old, who recently celebrated her birthday behind bars, will remain under administrative detention in Israeli prison. Her next court date is on March 11.

ISM sat down to speak with Ahed’s father, Bassem Tamimi, at the family home in Nabi Saleh to discuss the events of the trial. About the court’s decision to remove the media and diplomats from the court room, Bassem told ISM “[The Israelis] don’t want to show the world it’s just a theatre.” Bassem also told ISM about the poor conditions of Ahed’s imprisonment, but said that his daughter was still strong despite her treatment.

When asked if he had any hopes for the upcoming trial he said “No, they are a state above the law”.

Fawzi Al Junaidi Released

28th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Hebron, occupied Palestine

International Solidarity Movement visited the family home of Fawzi Al Junaidi who was released after his family paid a 10,000 shekel bail on Wednesday Fawzi returned back to his family home after a checkup at hospital. The iconic photo of a badly beaten Fawzi escorted by 30 Israeli Soldiers after his arrest went viral. Drawing attention to the excessive force often used by the Israeli army.

                                                             Picture Via [Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images]

The Palestinian youth was so badly beaten one of his upper ribs moved 3cm out of place after repeatedly being struck with a rifle at least four times. Despite his obvious suffering he was left bound, sitting on the concrete floor for four hours and was only taken to a hospital 4 days after his arrest at the order of a judge. Fawzi also reported having freezing water poured over his legs then they stamped on his legs whilst he was in custody after his arrest. During the military court proceedings four soldiers initially claimed to have seen Fawzi throwing stones but three soldiers withdrew their claims later leaving one soldier who claimed he saw him throw one rock. Fawzi who claims to have been outside getting the family grocery shopping maintains that he is innocent but was held in custody on the testimony of one soldier.

Fawzi gave many interviews sitting on a couch with his grandmother that day surrounded by family. Unfortunately, the Military court process will continue to disrupt the lives of the Fawzi and the Al Junaidi family as they will face more court hearings in the near future. Fawzi al-Junaidi is suffering from a dislocated shoulder following his time in Israeli detention.

There are 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli occupation prisons including 250 minors under the age of sixteen they have all been sentenced in a military court system where prosecutors are not required to prove the charges against them.

Video of Fawzi’s arrest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kWSEQcKukE

 

Israeli forces shoot at and arrest 14-year old boy in Hebron

26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
A fourteen year old Palestinian boy was shot at by settlers and soldiers before being arrested on the 25th June at 4:00 pm outside Bab al-Baladiya, the military base overlooking the old city in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). Sources are unclear as to why he was arrested however it is known that the Israeli forces have been looking for him for a long period of time.
The settlers that reportedly shot at Mohammad

Eyewitnesses claim that Muhammad was outside of the gate of Bab al-Baladiya when a group of settlers and soldiers shot three rounds of live ammunition as well as reportedly throwing sound bombs. After that, they came out from the gate and took him inside the base.

Muhammad’s brother Mahmoud (18) was arrested in a similar fashion on May 17th and has yet to be released. After arresting Mahmoud, the Israeli forces called their family to demand that Muhammad be turned over in exchange for Mahmoud. This praxis is clearly against any human rights standards and is intended to exert pressure on the family to basically exchange one son for the other, clearly disregarding any kind of legal standards in the proceeding.

This took place on the first day of Eid al-Fitr “the feast of breaking the fast”, the most important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide, marking the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. This feast, normally, is a family feast, where everyone would go and visit their families, which in occupied al-Khalil is impeded to a large degree by Israeli forces. Both Mohammad and Mahmoud though, will not be able to celebrate this feast with their families.

Israeli forces overlooking the Palestinian market

Protest in central Hebron against child arrests

23rd November 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Monday 21 November at Ibn Rushd Square, youth from Hebron gathered together with adults at a protest against the Israeli detention of Palestinian children. The protest was organized by the Prisoners Club and human right defenders who shared their information about over 350 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons with the public.

Since 2015, the Israeli occupation forces detained more than 2,000 Palestinian minors, at unexpected nightly arrest-raids and raids in refugee camps, or just kidnapped them from the streets. The numbers are rising and their treatment gets worser ( see: Addameer , Human Right Watch , Aljazeera , and the recently released statistics by B’tselem )

Israeli investigators are using torture techniques, both physical, emotional and psychological, to extract confessions from arrested children, who then will still be admitted in courts as evidence. Some Palestinian children receive life sentences by Israeli courts. Many others were sentenced to 10 or 20 years in prison.

At the protest meeting, the children showed pictures of their imprisoned age companions.


[VIDEO]

 

According to Palestinian official data, more than 7,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons.

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.

For more detailed accounts of the initial arrests and interrogations, please see IWPS Human Rights Reports from the ground:

HRR447: Arrest of 10 adolescents in Hares, Salfit (15 March 2013)

HRR448: Arrests of 3 more adolescents in Hares, Salfit: A (17 March 2013)

HRR451: Interrogation of a 16-year-old (21 March 2013)

HRR452: Arbitrary arrests of minors  (21 March 2013)

HRR458: Military court hearing for Hares arrest (9 April 2013)

HRR461: Arrest of three adolescents in Hares  (9 April 2013)