Hamas members ‘arrested in Jenin’
Ma’an – 27/08/2011
Israeli soldiers deploy during an arrest raid near Jenin [MaanImages, File]
JENIN – Israeli forces arrested two Hamas members in Jenin late Friday, local residents and security sources said.
Muhammad Ahmad Sokiyeh, 38, and Mahdi Hasan Hifawiyah, 34, were driving with their wives when “undercover” forces stopped their cars and took them to an undisclosed location, Palestinian security sources said.
The sources said Israel’s operatives opened fire in order to stop their cars. There were no reports of injury.
Sokiyeh has been wanted since 2005 and Hifawiyah has spent time in Israeli custody.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said there were no arrests in Jenin overnight.
Israeli occupation detains lawmaker Anwar Zaboun
Palestine Information Center – 26/08/2011
BETHLEHEM — Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) detained, Friday at dawn, Anwar Zaboun (45 years), member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, after raiding his home in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Local sources in the Bethlehem district said that a number of IOF troops aboard a number of military vehicles entered Bethlehem, they encircled the home of Anwar Zaboun, raided it and took the lawmaker away.
Zaboun was detained along with other Hamas PLC members in 2006 after occupation soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian resistance. He was released about 18 months ago after serving a 49-month term.
With the arrest of Zaboun, the number of Hamas lawmakers detained by the Israeli occupation rises to 19, including lawmaker Muhammad Abu Juhaisha who was arrested a few days ago in al-Khalil.
The Israeli occupation has escalated its arrests of Hamas supporters in the southern West Bank districts of al-Khalil and Bethlehem after the Elat attack.
Israeli Army Again Targets Jenin’s Freedom Theatre
Alternative Information Center | 22 August 2011
Jenin – After the Israeli army targets the theatre twice during the last month, arresting three of its members, today at approximately 02:00 in the morning of the 22nd August the Israeli army surrounded The Freedom Theatre and the Nagnaghiya family home.
Jacob Gough, the Acting General Manager at The Freedom Theatre left the office at about 01:45: “As I literally entered my home I got a call from neighbours of the theatre saying the army had surrounded the theatre.”
Jacob then returned to the theatre and as he drove into the courtyard was confronted by armed soldiers who forced him to turn around threatening violence if he didn’t. After a second attempt to get closer to the theatre he was forced to strip at gunpoint before being detained. “They said that they’ll beat me up if I even say a word or move”.
During this, the army were inside the home of Mohammed Naghnaghiye, the security guard at the theatre and brother of Adnan Nagnaghiya. Here they beat Mohammed before taking him away in handcuffs then proceeded to ransack all 3 floors of his family home leaving them in disarray. As the army left the area they fired live ammunition in an attempt to disperse the crowds of youth that had gathered.
These events come after a military court hearing that took place yesterday (21st August) in Jalame prison outside of Jenin. At the court hearing it was established that the three previously taken members of The Freedom Theatre had no connection to the murder of the theatre’s late director Juliano Mer Khamis and must be released within the week.
“This behaviour is mounting to systematical harassment of The Freedom Theatre by The Israeli army, it is scandalous. This proves that the Israeli army and security apparatus is either lost in their investigation or that they have the actual intention of damaging the theatre. It also seems that after the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis The Freedom Theatre is no longer exempted from the kind of oppression the Palestinian society is subjected to in general.” says Jonatan Stanczak, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre.
Bethlehem Mayor says soldiers ransacked home
Ma’an – 21/08/2011
BETHLEHEM — Israeli forces assaulted and detained a Palestinian man during a raid on the home of the Mufti of Bethlehem overnight Saturday, the sheikh said.
Sheikh Abdul-Majid Ata Amarna said troops raided his home in Duheisha refugee camp shortly before dawn prayers searching for his son Usayd, a journalist for Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV.
“When the soldiers raided my home, I asked them to wait before entering the different rooms so women could put on their head scarves and change their sleeping clothes, but instead of waiting they started firing inside the house injuring my brother-in-law, 27-year-old Bakr Badarin” the cleric told Ma’an.
He said Badarin was hit by a live bullet to his thigh, but soldiers refused to allow Palestinian Red Crescent medics to treat him and detained the injured man and the sheikh’s son Usayd Amarna.
The family learned later that Badarin was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem for treatment.
Israel detains Al-Jazeera reporter alleging ties with Hamas
Palestine Information Center – 16/08/2011
JENIN — Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan Samer Allawi is being held by Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet for alleged affiliation to Hamas.
An Israeli military court extended Allawi’s term of detention on Tuesday after Shin Bet filed an indictment against him alleging that he is affiliated to Hamas and had relations with some of the commanders of its armed wing.
Allawi has denied all charges, saying the Israeli authorities were trying to produce fraudulent charges and that his arrest was actually based on his work as a reporter. He said interrogations focused on his professional work, social ties, and financial affairs.
The defense has refuted the possibility of Shin Bet having any evidence to support the charges.
Allawi, 46, was arrested while departing from the West Bank on Tuesday Aug. 9 after a three-week visit to his home village of Sebastia northwest of Nablus city.
He told the lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society last week that the Israeli intelligence tried to recruit him and that when he refused to work with them he was threatened with being accused of something serious.
Social media at the mercy of UK government
Press TV – August 15, 2011
Social networking firms Facebook, Twitter, and Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry, have welcomed the forthcoming meeting with the British government.
British Home Secretary, Theresa May, is to hold a meeting with the executives of social networking firms to discuss the possibility of shutting down social media during future unrest in Britain.
Moreover, British Prime Minister, David Cameron, asserted that the unprecedented unrest across Britain had been mostly arranged through social media. Cameron acknowledged that “the police, the intelligence services and industry” cooperated with the government during the widespread unrest.
Cameron maintained that the British government had been looking at ways to prevent people from communicating with each other via social media when any sort of unrest threatens the country.
RIM, whose BlackBerry application has been a thorn in British government’s side, has announced it would observe “both UK privacy laws as well as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.”
Facebook has also expressed approval of the forthcoming meeting asserting that it took measures to make sure Facebook would be “a safe and positive platform for people in the UK” during the widespread unrest.
Furthermore, a report in the Financial Times said that Twitter looked forward to discussing the issues with May.
Meanwhile, Open Rights Group executive director, Jim Killock, has condemned government’s plans to ban social media asserting that such measures infringe upon people’s right to freedom of expression.
Killock said that the police should not be able to suspend individuals from using social media and any suspension decision should be made at courts.
All these measures by the British government come as the British media accuses the Iranian government of blocking access to the Internet and violating freedom of expression while the online version of almost all British newspapers have created a link to Facebook for an unfiltered access to the Iranian users.
Nevertheless, social networking sites, like Facebook, have become a national security concern after Britain faced widespread unrest which some analysts believe was a direct result of the government’s policies.
Israeli army detains Freedom Theater actor
Ma’an – 06/08/2011
Acting student Rami Awni Hwayel [MaanImages/Freedom Theater HO]
JENIN — Israeli forces on Saturday detained an acting student of the iconic Freedom Theater at a checkpoint near Jenin, theater staff said.
Rami Awni Hwayel, 20, was detained, handcuffed and blindfolded at Shave Shomeron checkpoint in the northern West Bank. He was returning from rehearsals in Ramallah, the theater said in a statement.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said a Palestinian was arrested at the Shave Shomeron checkpoint but had no further details.
Hwayel is the third member of the theater to be detained by the Israeli army in recent weeks.
On July 27, Israeli soldiers detained Adnan Naghnaghiye and Bilal Saadi during a dawn raid on the West Bank city.
Director Udi Aloni said Hwayel’s detention was “devastating.”
“Rami is playing the main role in ‘Waiting for Godot’ and doing an amazing job, he’s so dedicated to the work. He just left rehearsals today for the weekend to see his family for Ramadan. It’s terrible, we want our Pozzo back.”
The theater urged its friends and supporters to act “in order to stop this outrageous harassment by the Israeli army against a cultural establishment.”
In April, unknown assailants shot dead the theater’s general-director, Juliano Mer-Khamis, 52, an Israeli national, in an unsolved case which has frustrated local security services despite initial claims of success.
Mer-Khamis’ late mother founded the theater in the 1980s.
Reporter Files Complaint Against Israeli Military
By Katie Child | International Middle East Media Center | August 05, 2011
Mati Millstein filed a complaint against the Israeli Foreign Press Association on Thursday, August 5, 2011. The photojournalist was covering a Palestinian protest in Nabi Salih, when tear gas canisters were fired directly at the reporters covering the protest.
The Israeli military fired twelve rounds at the reporters who were clearly visible with yellow jackets labeled “PRESS.” or “TV”. None of the reporters were wounded.
When Millstein went to complain to the soldiers about their actions, the reporter was threatened with arrest and told to stand against a wall.
The American Israeli sent an email to the Jerusalem Post on Thursday saying that this event is, “the product of a military environment that increasingly sees the media as an enemy or a fifth column rather than as one of the key elements required for the maintenance of a democratic, transparent state.”
He further explained in the email that lately the Israeli Military has been using more violent and unsophisticated methods in dealing with the weekly Palestinian protests.
None of the other reporters decided to issue a complaint against the Israeli Military. Millstein saw a formal complaint against the Israeli Military was necessary since “draconian” methods of preventing the press from covering events are too often seen as acceptable in the occupied territories.
Millstein told the Jerusalem Post that many reporters have had their rights violated but decide not to complain out of fear of losing their credibility or their professional career.
Protest Israel’s detention of Palestinian writer Ahmad Qatamesh
By Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 08/03/2011
The Palestinian human rights group Addameer issued an appeal today urging supporters to take action on the administrative detention of Palestinian political scientist and writer Ahmad Qatamesh.
Qatamesh has been held in administrative detention after he was arrested on 21 April in the middle of the night. Hanin Ahmad Qatamesh, the detained writer’s daughter, described in an article for The Electronic Intifada how Israeli soldiers invaded their family home in Ramallah. Hanin and other relatives in the home were held hostage as Israeli soldiers demanded the surrender of Ahmad, who was not at home at the time. The Electronic Intifada also interviewed Qatamesh’s wife, Suha Barghouti, a well-known human rights defender.
The full action appeal from Addameer follows:
As part of its recently launched Prisoners at Risk campaign, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association demands the immediate release of Ahmad Qatamish, a well-known political scientist and writer currently held without charge or trial by Israel. The duration of his administrative detention has been set at 4 months, due to expire on 2 September 2011.
Addameer believes that the arrest and detention of Ahmad Qatamish has all the hallmarks of arbitrary detention and is aimed at silencing this prolific writer for his unbridled criticism of the Israeli occupation. Ahmad was arrested on 21 April 2011 in the middle of the night following a raid on his house whilst he was away, in which his wife, daughter, and two other relatives – including a 14-year-old girl – were held hostage by Israeli troops in order to compel him to surrender himself. Since then there has been a catalogue of serious errors and malpractice by the Israeli authorities. Ahmad was held for 13 days – during which time he was interrogated for only 10 minutes – before being informed on 3 May that he would be placed in administrative detention; despite the fact that both he and his lawyer had been told by the Military Court that he would be released that very day. Ahmad’s original administrative detention order was found to be flawed and had to be re-written twice, and even now the order is based on the vague accusation that he is an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a charge he has consistently and vehemently denied. As the order is based on a secret file which is not accessible to Ahmad or his lawyer, it is impossible for Ahmad to know how to defend himself against any possible charges.
This is not the first time Ahmad has been placed in administrative detention. In the 1990s, he was held for five-and-a-half years without charge or trial, making him one of the longest held administrative detainees in Israeli prisons. For more information about Ahmad’s case, you can read his profile here and follow updates on his detention on facebook.
The Prisoners at Risk campaign aims to highlight cases which raise grave concern and require urgent action. Without international pressure, there is the real risk that Ahmad’s administrative detention order will be renewed again in September. You can help stop this from happening by joining our campaign and doing one of the following:
– Use our template letter to the Israeli authorities to call for Ahmad’s immediate and unconditional release;
– Write to your own government and representatives to call on them to pressure Israel to release Ahmad (if you are a EU citizen, you can use our template letter to members of the European Parliament);
– Organize a vigil or a demonstration to call for Ahmad’s release;
– Write to Ahmad in prison (postal address: Ofer Prison, Givat Zeev, P.O. Box 3007, via Israel);
Statement by the Employees of the Libyan Broadcasting Authority
Uruknet | August 3, 2011
On 30 July 2011, NATO hit broadcasting facilities of the Libyan al-Jamahiriya state television. According to the TV station, three people were killed and 15 injured during the attack.
NATO said it aimed to degrade Gaddafi’s “use of satellite television as a means to intimidate the Libyan people and incite acts of violence against them”. The original title of its press statement was “NATO silences Gaddafi’s terror broadcasts”. The strike apparently failed to disrupt the television service.
Here’s the official statement of the Libyan state television in response to the attacks:
Statement by the Employees of the Libyan Broadcasting Authority
30 Jul 2011
In an act of international terrorism and in violation of UNSC resolutions, NATO targeted facilities of the Libyan Broadcasting Authority in the early hours of this morning. 3 of our colleagues were murdered and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists.
NATO admitted the crime citing “silencing Gaddafi’s propaganda machine” as a justification for such a murderous act.
We are the employees of the official Libyan TV. We are not a military target, we are not commanders in the army and we do not pose threat to civilians. We are performing our job as journalists representing what we wholeheartedly believe is the reality of NATO’s aggression and the violence in Libya.
We have the right to work in a safe environment protected by national and international law. The fact that we work for the Libyan government or represent anit-NATO, anti-armed gangs views does not make us a legitimate target for NATO’s rockets.
As journalists, we demand that we get full protection from the international community and ask our brothers in the profession from all around the world to stand against such attacks targeting media personnel.
Foreign journalists in Tripoli, Reporters without Borders and human rights organisations: we appeal to you to make your moral and professional stand clear on this issue.
We are hopeful that your media organisation will help us highlight this important issue and come out in support of our just cause.
Thank you.
Muhammad Ahmed Mukhtar, Abdelwanis Sulaiman Elsayed, Abdelwahid Muhammad Ali
CIA and FBI Tried to Get U.S. Lawyer to Betray Arab Clients
By Sherwood Ross – Blacklisted News – July 29, 2011
Federal agents from the FBI and CIA/FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force tried to get a distinguished international lawyer to inform on his Arab and Muslim clients in violation of their Constitutional rights to attorney-client privilege, this reporter has learned. When the lawyer refused, he said the FBI placed him on a “terrorist watch list.”
Law professor Francis Boyle gave a chilling account of how, in the summer of 2004, two agents showed up at his office (at the University of Illinois, Champaign,) “unannounced, misrepresented who they were and what they were about to my secretary, gained access to my office, interrogated me for about one hour, and repeatedly tried to get me to become their informant on my Arab and Muslim clients.”
“This would have violated their (clients) Constitutional rights and my ethical obligations as an Attorney,” Boyle explained. “I refused. So they put me on all of the United States government’s ‘terrorist watch’ lists.”
Boyle said his own lawyer found “there are about five or six different terrorist watch lists, and as far as he could determine, I am on all of them.” Despite a legal appeal to get his name removed, Boyle said, “I will remain on all of these terrorist watch lists for the rest of my life or until the two Agencies who put me on there remove my name, which is highly unlikely.”
“Whatever people might think about lawyers, we are the canary-birds of democracy. When the government goes after your lawyer soon they will be going after you,” Boyle warned. “Indeed,” he added, “the government goes after your lawyer in order to get to you, which is what happened to me. This is what the so-called ‘war against terrorism’ is really all about. It is a war against the United States Constitution.”
Boyle is a leading American professor and practitioner of international law. He holds doctorates in both law (cum laude) and Political Science from Harvard and has more than two decades of experience representing pacifist anti-war resisters, suspects in the so-called “War on Terror” and foreign governments such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is the author of numerous books, including “Protesting Power,” (Rowman & Littlefield), “Biowarfare and Terrorism,”(Clarity) and “Destroying World Order”(Clarity).
Writing of the attorney-client privilege, the American Bar Association has defined it as “the right of clients to refuse to disclose confidential communications with their lawyers, or to allow their lawyers to disclose them.” It further states the privilege “is viewed as fundamental to preserve the constitutionally based right to effective assistance of legal counsel, in that lawyers cannot function effectively on behalf of their clients without the ability communicate with them in confidence.”
The attempt by the government to destroy the Constitutional right of privileged communication between lawyer and client began in earnest after 9/11 when the Justice Department initiated a wave of such illegal actions. According to an article in Criminal Justice Magazine, Summer, 2002, “Immediately following the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a controversial order that permits the government to monitor all communications between a client and an attorney when there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ to ‘believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of violence or terrorism.” That order “raises a wide range of constitutional concerns under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments,” authors Paul Rice and Benjamin Saul wrote.
As if to mock the very concept of attorney-client privilege, military interrogators at Guantanamo prison posed as “lawyers” to trick illegally held suspects into providing them with information, according to a report in The Catholic Worker newspaper.
And Newsday, the Long Island, N.Y., daily, reported a wholesale invasion of lawyer-client privilege, as when lawyers at Guantanamo are forced to turn over their interview notes to guards, who send them on to the Pentagon facility in Virginia that is the only place lawyers can go to write their motions and where the Pentagon attempts to edit out detainees’ claims of mistreatment from the public record. What’s more, Newsday reported, “The military has set up a system that delays legal correspondence (between lawyers and prisoners) for weeks,” adding that “Detainees have alleged that interrogators have tried to turn them against their lawyers.”
According to Newsday, guards and interrogators peruse prisoners’ private legal papers and warn them that prisoners who have lawyers will wait longer to get out! Tom Wilner, a lawyer for 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said an interrogator asked one of his clients, “Did you know your lawyers are Jews?”
The U.S. government is “not only trying to deny counsel to the prisoners, but is actively trying to remove Guantanamo from any scrutiny, legal or otherwise” as well as “marginalizing the lawyers representing the prisoners,” The Catholic Worker said.
Placing attorney Boyle on the Terrorist Watch List is a form of punishment that is being ever more widely applied. According to “USA Today” the list grew from 288,000 names in 2005 to 1-million in March, 2009, according to an article of March 10th of that year. “People put on the watch list… can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected to other scrutiny,” reporter Peter Eisler wrote.
The attorney-client privilege is the oldest such privilege enshrined in Anglo-Saxon law and was commonly respected even under the British crown during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. That it is being flouted by the U.S. government today when a constitutional lawyer occupies the White House represents an incredible stain on what remains of the fabric of American democracy.
#
Sherwood Ross can be reached at sherwoodross10@gmail.com
Ufree condemns new indictment filed against mayor’s daughter
Palestine Information Center – 30/07/2011
OSLO — The European network to support the Palestinian prisoners (Ufree) has condemned Israel’s continued detention of the 17-year-old daughter of the mayor of Al-Beira near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The statement comes as the Israeli military prosecutor has placed new charges against her and signs of torture inside the prison have surfaced on her person.
The girl Bushra al-Tawil has been in Israeli custody for 25 days so far. She was abducted in a raid on her family’s home.
Ufree said that Israel was deliberately complicating releasing Tawil in a bid to bargain over her or use her to extort her father Mayor Jamal al-Tawil in a political game.
Israeli occupation forces had arrested Jamal al-Tawil as well as his wife on several occasions.
The Israeli Ofer military court ruled Thursday for the release of Tawil as no condemning evidence had been presented against her. But the military prosecutor quickly intervened and introduced an entirely new indictment against her. It also ordered that she be kept in detention and appear before another judge.
Ufree said that by keeping her detained after she was ruled a free girl; the Ofer court gave the prosecutor a fresh chance to present a new indictment against her, as the initial indictment had not been backed by evidence.
Since imprisoned, Tawil has experienced extreme physical pain, Ufree said quoting sources from her family. She was also tied up in awkward positions during the investigation process. Her family said that she appeared to have been suffering from fatigue and health problems when they last saw her bound in the courthouse.
Ufree said it will begin contacting international rights groups in an effort to unify efforts being made to support Tawil. It is also planning on preparing a document on Tawil to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.
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By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2023
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
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