Egypt sentenced nearly 600 to death last year
Reprieve | November 14, 2015
The Egyptian government has sentenced nearly 600 people to death in the last year, with the vast majority of death sentences handed down in relation to political protest, human rights organization Reprieve has found.
Data collected by Reprieve has found that since January 2014, at least 588 people have been sentenced to death in Egypt. In the cases that Reprieve was able to identify, some 72% of sentences were handed down for attending pro-democracy protests.
Reprieve’s report, released today, also found that the Egyptian authorities are overseeing a marked rise in actual executions. Between 2011 and 2013, only one execution was carried out in Egypt; but since January 2014, some months after President Sisi seized power, at least 27 people have been executed. The report also finds that at least 15 mass trials have taken place since March 2014.
Since taking power, President Sisi has overseen a regime of mass trials and sweeping death sentences for protestors – sometimes involving hundreds of prisoners at a time. Among those on trial and facing a potential death sentence is Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa, who is being assisted by Reprieve. Yesterday, it was revealed that Ibrahim has witnessed torture methods including ‘crucifixion’ and electrocution being carried out in Wadi Natrun prison, where he is being held.
Mr Halawa’s family were last week joined by several British MPs in asking the UK to intervene on the case, during President Sisi’s visit to London for talks with the Prime Minister. The Foreign Office has told Reprieve that the UK is ‘monitoring’ Ibrahim’s case, and has said that it has been raised with the Egyptian authorities.
However, there are concerns over the UK government’s apparent support for the Egyptian security forces. Reprieve has found that the British government invited security and policing firm G4S to be part of the UK delegation at a recent major Egyptian trade conference hosted by President Sisi.
Commenting, Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, which is assisting Ibrahim Halawa, said: “President Sisi has overseen an unprecedented surge in death sentences as part of a wave of repression that should attract condemnation from Egypt’s allies. Since 2013, many thousands of people – including journalists, activists and juveniles like Ibrahim Halawa – have been locked up for attending protests. Police torture is reported all too often, and Kafkaesque ‘mass trials’ have seen hundreds of death sentences handed down at a time. More than ever, the UK must use its increasingly close relationship with Egypt to urge an end to these terrible abuses – including the release of juveniles like Ibrahim.”
The NY Times: In Praise of Israel’s Killing Squads
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | November 13, 2015
In The New York Times it’s all part of a high stakes game, the good guys (Israelis) against the bad guys (Palestinians), and this time the good guys won, taking the prize through clever and audacious disguises.
Such is the tone of Isabel Kershner’s story today that tells of yet another outrage by Israel: Special forces invaded a hospital in Hebron, held the staff at gunpoint, killed a visitor point blank and kidnapped a patient recovering from surgery.
Condemnation of this atrocity and other recent attacks on Palestinian hospitals has come from Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross and a half dozen United Nations agencies, but none of their criticisms are included in the Times story.
Kershner, instead, only includes objections from Palestinians, and in the context of her writing, they come off as sore losers who would be expected to complain, in any case.
Her story opens with a description of the raid, as undercover Israelis disguised as Arabs enter the hospital, pushing a “pregnant woman” in a wheelchair, and it ends with several paragraphs looking back at other Israeli operations that involved masquerades: a 1972 action to foil a hijacking, a “famous” revenge assassination by former prime minister Ehud Barak, and a raid in Dubai to kill a Hamas commander.
In other words, it was all part of an illustrious Israeli tradition.
The Palestinians are described as “livid,” a term that implies a somewhat excessive rage and carries a hint of derision. It is not a neutral term in news writing, but Times editors apparently had no problem allowing it to stand.
The Israeli operation, on the other hand, is characterized as something of a breeze, not the bloody and outrageous affair that it was. They entered the hospital and then “about 10 minutes later they were on their way out.” They “whisked away” the suspect, Azzam Shalalda, leaving his cousin, Abdallah Shalalda, dead on the floor of the hospital room.
In describing a similar raid on a Nablus hospital last month, Kershner writes that Israeli forces “snatched” a suspect in a fatal shooting. Such vocabulary implies a kind of cinematic caper, devoid of real life complications.
Missing from her story is any mention of international humanitarian law, which forbids such violations of hospital and health care facilities. Amnesty International also noted that the killing of Abdallah Shalalda appeared to be a deliberate extrajudicial execution, and Tikun Olam blogger, Richard Silverstein, wrote that the undercover agents had entered the hospital expressly to kill Abdallah and arrest his cousin.
Kershner, however, is quick to quote the military, which claimed that “a suspect attacked the force, which responded to the assault and fired on the attacker.” Only later in her story does she note that hospital officials said he was shot not during an attack but when he emerged from a bathroom. Amnesty stated that his wounds were consistent with a deliberate execution.
Her story glosses over the recent raids on a Jerusalem hospital and UN demands that they cease. (Israel, however, has continued to invade the facility.)
In the eyes of Kershner (and the Times), it seems that there is no problem with Israeli violations of international law when the state wants to apprehend a Palestinian suspect. She writes that the raid was Israel’s way of saying that “there will be no safe haven for Palestinian suspects.”
By contrast, the Times has never bothered to report that Israel knows the identity of Jewish settlers responsible for burning to death three members of a Palestinian family but refuses to arrest them because it might reveal intelligence methods.
The terrible irony of this double standard is beyond the radar of Isabel Kershner and the Times editors. On the contrary, they present Israel’s lawless and bloody actions as evidence of ingenuity and daring, celebrating a “victory” over the ultimately helpless and endlessly oppressed Palestinians.
What the Videos Show: Israel is Killing in Cold Blood
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | November 11, 2015
What is inspiring young Palestinians to attempt yet more stabbing attacks on Israelis? The answer, according to The New York Times, has nothing to do with the violence of military occupation, the abuse of Palestinian children or trigger-happy troops; it is merely a “loop-like dynamic” of attack and response inspired by video clips.
In a story today, Isabel Kershner reports that videos showing knife attacks and heavy-handed treatment of young detainees are inspiring Palestinian boys as young as 12 to attempt knife assaults. But in a significant omission, the article says nothing about disturbing videos that support a different take: Many Palestinians have been killed when they posed no possible threat.
Likewise, even as Kershner writes about youthful attackers, she (and the Times) have avoided any mention of the constant reports from rights groups over recent years that detail the abusive treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli custody. These include reports of troops arresting children as young as 6 and documentation of violence used against the young detainees. (Also see TimesWarp 1-13-14.)
Instead, readers are introduced to two cousins, 12 and 13, who played hooky from school yesterday in order to carry out a copycat stabbing attack in Jerusalem. Both were arrested; one was seriously wounded in the process; and both had watched video footage the night before of Israeli interrogators aggressively questioning another young teen, Ahmad Manasra, who was wounded after an alleged attack that left his cousin dead.
Kershner then devotes much of her article to rehashing the story of Manasra, who was featured earlier in a lengthy piece aimed at showing how Palestinians got it wrong when they claimed the boy had been killed. It appears to have the same purpose here: to undermine charges that Israeli troops have made false claims about knife attacks and have planted evidence.
She writes, “In several cases, with no video corroboration, Palestinians have insisted that no stabbings took place and have accused the Israeli authorities of planting knives at the scene.”
Several significant factors are missing from this statement: Although video evidence is unavailable in some cases, others are supported by credible eyewitness accounts contradicting official claims; rights groups, not only Palestinians, have charged Israeli troops with killing innocent victims; and video evidence does exist that bolsters many of the charges against Israeli forces.
In a press release last month, Amnesty International said Israeli soldiers and police had resorted to “extreme and unlawful measures” and had “used intentional and lethal force without justification.” The rights group highlighted four cases of “what appear to have been extrajudicial executions.”
Amnesty pointed up one “especially egregious case” in which Israeli forces killed 19-year-old Sa’ad Muhammad Youssef al-Atrash in Hebron on Oct. 26 as he tried to retrieve an identity card. As the youth reached into his pocket, a soldier behind Atrash shot him on the right side. The report continues, “The eyewitness said he was shot six or seven times and bled profusely as he lay on the ground for about 40 minutes afterwards, while soldiers failed to provide medical treatment.”
Times readers, however, are unlikely to know anything about Muhammad Atrash and how he died, nor are they aware of the Amnesty statements or of reports from other rights groups, including those in Israel and Europe, all of them charging Israel with unlawful killings.
Since the Amnesty release last month, Israel has continued to kill Palestinians, many of whom posed no possible threat, bringing the total to over 80 killed and some 8,500 wounded since the beginning of October. As of Oct. 31, eight Israelis had died and 115 had been wounded, according to the United Nations. These numbers, however, do not appear in Kershner’s story.
Last week Israeli forces shot and killed a 73-year-old grandmother as she drove through Hebron to meet her sister for lunch. A spokesman said she tried to ram soldiers with the car and that a knife was found in her car. Video footage shows a different scenario: Tharwat Sharawi was driving at a moderate speed and in no way aimed to hit soldiers when a barrage of bullets took her life.
The Times has made no mention of this video evidence, nor has it informed readers of other disturbing cases, also caught on video:
- A settler shoots and kills Fadi Qawasmi, 18, in Hebron on Oct. 17, and appears to hand a knife to a soldier, who drops it near the body.
- A mob chases Fadi Alloun in Jerusalem on Oct. 4, shouting, “Shoot him!” as he runs for his life. Police bring him down with a hail of bullets.
- Muhammad Ramadan al Muhtasib, 23, is shot multiple times and killed as he lies helpless on the ground in Hebron on Oct. 30. The army alleges that he tried to stab a soldier.
- Issra Abed, 30, is shot at a bus station in Afula as she stands with her hands over her head. After she lies wounded on the ground, a bystander approaches and kicks away a pair of sunglasses lying by her side. (Police said she was grasping a knife.)
- Dania Irsheid, 18, is shot and killed at a checkpoint in Hebron after passing through metal detectors and a revolving iron gate. Video footage show Israeli police giving her no assistance as she lies bleeding on the ground.
- Hadeel al Hashlamoun, 18, is shot at a checkpoint in Hebron on Sept. 22 and left to bleed to death. A video shows her being dragged by her heels along the ground.
In several of these videos the indifference of Israeli troops is striking. None of them attempts to help the victims, and in some cases witnesses report that settlers are allowed to take pictures of the dead and dying while Palestinian journalists and medics are turned away. One highly disturbing photo shows a smiling settler taking a photo of a dead Palestinian in Hebron on Oct. 29.
In this context, the report by Kershner is appalling. Although video evidence, eyewitness accounts and investigations by rights groups point to a pattern of trigger happy—even blood thirsty—security forces killing Palestinians with the slightest degree of suspicion, the Times has made no effort to inform readers of these findings. On the contrary, it places this misleading story by Kershner on page 1 above the fold.
Here we find another attempt to blame the victims, to paint Palestinians as the violent offenders, omitting even the numbers of dead and injured, which reveal a disproportionate death toll of 10 Palestinians for every one Israeli. The facts, however, seem to be of no account when it comes to protecting Israel. Given the choice between shielding this rogue state and reporting the news, the Times stands with Israel.
Undercover Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian in Hebron hospital
Ma’an – November 12, 2015
HEBRON – Undercover Israeli forces on Thursday shot dead a Palestinian during a hospital raid in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses and hospital staff said.
Abdullah Azzam Shalaldah, 28, was shot several times by forces who raided the surgery unit of al-Ahli hospital in order to detain his cousin, Azzam Ezzat Shalaldah, 20, who was shot by an Israeli settler last month, hospital staff told Ma’an.
Abdullah and another relative were in the hospital visiting Azzam when around 20 undercover Israeli soldiers entered the hospital at around 4:00 a.m., witnesses said.
The forces tied up the relative while Abdullah, who was in the bathroom at the time, entered the room and was shot dead on scene. The undercover forces then retreated from the hospital with Azzam, taking him into custody, witnesses added.
Video footage from security cameras shows a group of around 16 men walking through the corridors of the hospital just before 4 a.m. pushing a wheel chair, when suddenly the man sitting down removes his blanket, stands up, and all the men draw guns and proceed down the hall.
The footage also shows what appears to be an Israeli agent dressed as a Palestinian woman, and other Israeli forces dressed as Palestinian Muslim men, wearing kuffiyeh’s and appearing to have fake beards.
An Israeli army spokesperson was unable to comment on the presence of undercover forces during the raid, while Israeli media reported that the forces arrived in two large vans with someone pretending to be pregnant.
The army spokesperson told Ma’an that a combined force of Israeli army and police members had entered the hospital in order to detain Azzam, when an “additional suspect attacked the forces.” The forces responded with live fire, killing the man, the spokesperson confirmed.
The spokesperson said that the forces detained Azzam on the grounds that he “stabbed an Israeli in the chest in Gush Etzion” on Oct. 25, wounding him severely, adding that “the victim shot him” as he fled the scene.
The spokesperson added that the “Shalaldah family are known Hamas operatives.”
Palestinian security sources told Ma’an on Oct. 25 following the attack that Azzam was shot by an Israeli settler. A spokesperson for Hadassah hospital said at the time that the settler, 58, had received a light “stab” wound to his chest, and had possibly been hit with a stone in his head.
Palestinian witnesses told Ma’an that they believed that the alleged Palestinian attacker had fled the scene unharmed and that Azzam had been working in agricultural fields when he was shot.
Abdullah, from the Hebron-area village of Sair, was the 80th Palestinian to be killed since Oct. 1.
The majority of those killed were shot dead by Israeli forces during alleged, attempted, and actual attacks on Israeli military and civilians.
Ten Israelis have been killed by individual Palestinians during the same time period.
Last Imprisoned Member of Angola 3 Won’t Be Released, Faces New Trial
Sputnik – 10.11.2015
On Monday, a federal appeals court overturned a district judge’s ruling that the last member of the Angola 3 still behind bars, a man who has been in solitary confinement most of the last four decades, must be freed and not face another trial.
In June, District Court Judge James J. Brady ruled that Albert Woodfox must be released and prohibited the court from retrying him. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, however, decided that Brady overstepped his bounds and “abused his discretion” in making that ruling.
“If ever a case justifiably could be considered to present ‘exceptional circumstances’ barring re-prosecution, this is that case,” Judge James L. Dennis, the only judge to dissent against the 2-1 decision, wrote of the ruling. He went on to cite Woodfox’s failing health, four decades in solitary, and the unconstitutional convictions that landed him there.
Woodfox is imprisoned for an incident in 1972, when he was imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, for an armed robbery. During his time there, a prison guard was stabbed to death.
Woodfox and another prisoner, Herman Wallace, were accused of the murder, despite no evidence linking them to the crime. They have maintained that they were accused due to their criticism of the prison and their affiliation with the Black Panther Party.
The third member of the “Angola 3,” Robert Hillary King, was convicted for another, separate crime. He spent 29 years alone in solitary before being released in 2001.
In 2013, Wallace died only a few days after his conviction was overturned on grand-jury-discrimination grounds.
Due to the fact that all the key witnesses are dead and thus will not be able to offer testimony at a new trial, the prosecution has proposed that stand-ins read the deceased witnesses’ prior testimony from transcripts, the New Yorker reported.
Supporters have asserted that, given the circumstances, there is no way that Woodfox will receive a fair trial.
Punished for his work: medic Ahmad Nasser describes his recent arrest
Israeli forces attacking journalists and medics (Ahmad) at clashes near Beit El Oct 30 – Photo credit Fadi Arouri
International Solidarity Movement | November 10, 2015
Ramallah, Occupied Palestine – In the early morning of November 2nd 2015, Ahmad Nasser was kidnapped by Israeli forces from his home near Ramallah. He was accused of attempting to kill soldiers by throwing stones and molotov cocktails, and was released without charge 15 hours later. He was repeatedly assaulted during his arrest and suffered broken ribs and further injuries.
It is Ahmad’s belief that the arrest was directly related to his work as a medic and humanitarian activist at demonstrations.
Just 60 hours before his arrest he was acting as a medic in a private ambulance service, administering medical aid to demonstrators injured at a Friday clash in Beit El. Along with journalists and other medics, he was directly targeted in his work on that day and prevented from tending to a demonstrator run over by an army jeep. Israeli forces threw a sound grenade at the group, teargassed the ambulances and then proceeded to viciously pepperspray press and medics.
The media surrounding this, coupled with his work in previous weeks tending to those shot with live ammunition in clashes near Ramallah, are likely reasons he was chosen for arrest as another victim of the recent increase in intimidation tactics being used against Palestinians, especially young men. As he states: “they try to accuse me of some charges but they cannot – if they had some real evidence that I threw stones they would never release me, but they didn’t – they just want to punish me for my work.” This is his account of his arrest and assault: just one story in the daily narrative of the occupation.
Ahmad in his work as a medic at demonstrations near Ramallah in October. Blood is from a man wounded in the chest with live ammunition shot by Israeli forces.
On the night of the 2nd of November I got home around 2 in the morning. Five minutes later I heard the Israeli army jeeps stopped outside my house and I took a look from my window to see what was going on. I didn’t know they were looking for me, and I saw the soldiers go to my neighbor’s house and start to knock on the door. When someone answered they questioned him and asked about who is living in the building. The neighbor, an old man, said that he didn’t know, so they started to beat him – they struck him with the end of the gun and they hit him and they took him with them to check the other houses and they entered his house with his family inside.
Then they knocked on my door and I opened it for them and I saw a lot of soldiers, about 60, standing there with their guns and ready to shoot. I saw the hatred and anger in their eyes and one of them asked me “who are you?” so I told him my name is Ahmad so he asked me “Ahmad what?” so I said “Ahmad Nasser.” He checked his phone and asked me for my I.D. but I didn’t have it at the time so I gave him the number of my I.D. He told me to stand on the side outside our front door, and to take my jacket off and give it to my mother. My mother and my brother, who was recently released from prison, were both in the room. My mother was very scared – you know, she is a mother. They kicked my kitten because she was playing around them, and they started to check me and he asked me again about my I.D. number to confirm it.
After that they went through my house and started to look and search for something and the soldiers outside were asking me if I have guns so I told them I do not. One of them asked me to take my shoes off and he checked it and after that asked me to put them on again. He told me to face the wall again and put the zip-tie hand-cuffs on my hands, behind my back. I told him that I have a problem in my right hand from an old injury and he said okay, but he tightened it more. They blindfolded me and asked me to sit on the stairs, with my arms back behind me, and after a few minutes they came out of my house with some personal things they had taken, and they told my family not to move or they will shoot them. They told me to walk and one of the soldiers grabbed me in a bad way and told me “MOVE!” and I told him that there is stairs but he pushed me down the stairs so that I fell onto my knee and slid down.
He started to say bad things about me and my family and started to beat me up until we arrived to the jeep and he shoved me into the edge of the front door. After that they pushed me against the side of the jeep and then against the back door and another soldier told him that there is no space in that car, so he took me to another jeep and hit me on the back door and started to punch me and hit me with something metal, I think the end of the gun. This is when they broke my ribs. There were many soldiers around. I heard one shout at my brother “GO! Or I will shoot you!” because he was trying to film from inside.
I was on my knees in front of the back step and a soldier put all his weight on me and after that he tightened the zip-tie (hand-cuffs) again but this time more strong. He told me to sit but I couldn’t do that because I don’t see a thing so they just pushed me inside the jeep and after a few seconds grabbed me out again so that the soldiers can sit and pushed me again inside the jeep on the ground. I was in a bad position until we arrived to the Ofer military base near to that area. After that he opened the door and grabbed me again and one of them helped me to stand and he was holding me in a bad way and another one came to me and he started to ask me if I throw stones at the Israeli soldiers. I said no and he told me that I am lying and said bad things to me and hit me in my stomach again and pushed me until we got to the arrest truck and he told me there are steps. I got into the truck and a female soldier asked me to sit and to shut up so I told them that they should take the hand-cuffs off, because they were so tight that my hands were swollen, but they didn’t listen to me.
When we arrived to the clinic to check me one of the soldiers was fighting with the zip-tie trying to take it off and that hurt me more but in the end he took it and the doctor checked me. They took the blindfold off inside the closed room and asked me questions, like if I am sick, if I am taking medication, if I have had any surgery, if I have any problems with my health. He checked where I was sore but said “you are fine.” They put the blindfold back on me and they took me out and I was waiting for 20 minutes until some soldiers came and took me to the truck again. I was waiting in the truck for a few minutes and they brought another prisoner from my town. I knew he was there because I heard them say “watch your head” but it hit against the truck, and I knew him from his voice. When we tried to talk to each other the soldiers shouted at us to shut up and they start to move and they took us somewhere, we didn’t know where. After a while driving they stopped and we got out and they told us to sit and it was so cold and windy, and we just had to sit out like that for a few hours.
Medical certificate which Ahmad initiated after he was released, when Israeli forces medic had said he was “fine” directly after beating. Report reads: “The patient came to the clinic 2/11/15; He was suffering from – Pain on the left side of his chest and back, caused by beating by the Israeli occupation forces. Patient has been X-rayed and broken ribs found on the left side, number 8 and 9. He has been administered treatment and this report on request.”
When I was talking to the other prisoner, a female soldier came and told us to shut up and said we couldn’t talk. I asked why and she said “I am treating you as a human being, just stop talking.” So I told her “it’s boring for us! So I will talk to him… and if you are treating me like a human being, for the first place I shouldn’t be here, and second, you should bring me a jacket and a blanket and water and we should be sitting in a warm room, not outside.” So she didn’t know what to say and she said, “just stop talking,” and she left. After about one hour, they brought me a jacket and a blanket and they left. After about 3 hours, another soldier came and took the blankets from us. A few hours later again, around 7am, he came again with the blanket, put it on us, and he left. In the morning, around 8.30, we told the soldier who was guarding the gate that we wanted to go to the toilet, but he didn’t listen to us, and after we hassled him for a few minutes he went to check whether there was another soldier to take us. He came back and said there is no-one to take you, so you can’t go. So, we kept annoying him for one hour, and after that, a female soldier came and she said “the toilet is closed, so there is no toilet” and she took me to a spot, behind the jeep. She would not give us any privacy. After that, they put us both on chairs and they left again for about half an hour.
Another jeep came with three soldiers, they put us in the jeep, and they took us to the Ofer military prison again. We stayed there for half an hour, and then they took us to Sha’ar Binyamin [illegal settlement] police station. They put us in a room with another 2 prisoners and we stayed there for a while, sitting on the ground until the investigator (police) came and took us to interrogate us. It was only at this point that the blindfold and handcuffs were taken off… all the time before that, I was blind. He started to ask me questions. He told me “we suspect you – you were throwing stones and molotovs, and you tried to kill soldiers with stones. What do you say about that?” So, I said “about what exactly?” He said “about what I told you” I told him “you are imagining that…. nothing like this could happen” And he said “OK but we have evidence.” I asked him “who told you that?” He said “just, we have evidence” so I demanded that they show it to me. They showed me a photo of another guy, someone I don’t know. I told him “this one is not me and I deny what you are saying and I want to talk to my lawyer,” so he called my lawyer. This was the first time I had been allowed to contact my lawyer, so many hours after I was arrested.
I talked to my lawyer for a while and after that he told me “stop talking and give me the phone.” He started to ask me if I have ever thrown stones or molotovs, and do I know people who throw stones or molotovs and if I join demonstrations against the soldiers or if I am thinking to join a demonstration. So, I told him “I don’t join demonstrations, and I would not do that, because when I go to a demonstration I go as a medic and work as a humanitarian mission.” And they said “but you still don’t want to tell me if you know anything.” So I told him, “I don’t know anything, and I deny everything that you have, and your evidence is fake.” So he decided to take my DNA and fingerprints and they also took photos of me. Another investigator, he asked to see my hands, so I showed them to him and he said “these hands are not throwing stones… these hands are throwing molotovs.” I started to laugh and told him “you are dreaming” and he said “OK, what is your name” so I gave him my name and he told me “we have been looking for you for a long time.” I said “really? I am in Ramallah… and you are 10 minutes away, and you could take me any time.. so don’t make fun of me.” He said “OK, go down” and when I was about to go into the elevator, he showed me his hand, with 4 fingers, and he asked me “how much is it?” So I told him “it’s four.” He said “no, it is five.” I told him, “no it’s four.” He flipped his hand around, and said “no, like this it’s 4,” he flipped his hand again, “and like this [with a bent thumb on the palm side], its five.” I told him “if it’s four or five it’s your problem, I see four.” They told me “OK, just go.”
So, the other policeman took me to the room where I was sitting with the soldiers and the other 3 prisoners and they kept us there for about 2 hours. It must have been about 3pm by then. Three policeman came, and they said “these 2 guys [pointing at the others, from Jalazon camp] – to Ofer.” And me and the other guy, “to the custody room.” We stayed there around one hour before the policeman came and opened the door for us. He said “we have nothing against you. So, you can leave. And, do you know how to go out from here [the police station]?” I told him yes, but when I got to the main door I said to him “you didn’t charge us, but you release us inside a settlement, and we might get killed here” He said “no, you are fine, just leave,” so we left. They try to accuse me of some charges but they cannot – if they had some real evidence that I threw stones they would never release me, but they didn’t – they just want to punish me for my work. And I am free now. Thanks for everyone who tried to help me, in any way. I appreciate it.
***
The Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) estimates that approximately 1,350 night raids are occurring annually in the West Bank, with that number having escalated in the tensions of recent months. Most of these raids occur between 2:00 and 4:00am “and commence with aggressive banging on the front door. In some cases the door is simply kicked in or blown off its hinges.” While night raids are used extensively as an arrest tactic, the WCLAC explains that in fact in the majority of cases no arrests are made, and it is moreover a “strategy of mass intimidation of the Palestinian civilian population.” According to the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, in October alone, Israeli occupation forces arrested 1,195 Palestinians including 177 children, 16 females and 23 after they were injured. Among those arrested, 128 were placed under administrative detention, 31 of whom were arrested for alleged “incitement” including through social media, 3 of whom were children from Jerusalem. This brought the total number of Palestinian political prisoners to 6,700 by the end of October. They state that the “Israeli occupation authorities have publicly declared that these mass arrests as well as other measures taken against Palestinians in the occupied territory are aimed at suppressing the recent uprising, clearly indicating that the mass arrests are a form of collective punishment and political oppression aimed at forcing Palestinians to submission.”
Related information:
See 972 magazine report on clashes near Beit El on 30th October
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association special report on October arrests
Sisi’s London visit was a nightmare for him
MEMO | November 9, 2015
Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi’s visit to Britain turned from a long-awaited dream into a nightmare with a series of losses on the media, legal and political levels, an analyst has said.
The political analyst, who preferred not to be named, told Arabi21 that Al-Sisi’s visit turned into a complete failure because the media used the occasion to remind the public of the human rights abuses committed by his regime in Egypt.
In a rare moment, an Egyptian woman who was sentenced to death in Egypt had the opportunity to appear in the British media and describe human rights violations committed by the military in Egypt, the analyst said.
The British press and TV channels published multiple reports which considered the visit “a violation of British society values and standards”.
The unnamed analyst said Al-Sisi mainly lost on a political level as, for the first time, the two biggest opposition parties rejected the visit; Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn described Al-Sisi’s stay as a “threat to national security”.
In addition to this, as many as 55 senior British politicians signed a letter calling for Al-Sisi to be expelled.
On a legal level, the analyst explained, it was revealed during his stay that British police were already investigating claims of war crimes committed by Al-Sisi and symbols of his regime.
British police have a list of 43 names of senior statesmen, ministers and leaders of the army and security who are under investigation for committing human rights violations, the analyst added
Al-Sisi arrived in London following an invitation from British Prime Minister David Cameron; however the two only met for one hour during his three-day trip, and no joint press conference was held following the meeting.
The trip coincided with the British authorities’ decision to suspend all flights to Sharm El-Sheikh and evacuate all British tourists from there following a Russian airplane crash a few days earlier.
Turkish Court Clears Suspects of Forced Disappearances of Kurds
teleSUR | November 7, 2015
Turkey’s most comprehensive cold case of the historic PKK-state conflict ended with the acquittal of all eight suspects accused of leading a branch of the clandestine gendarmerie group JITEM that reportedly tortured and killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the 1990s.
The case began when mass graves were found in wells of a southeastern town and included 48 hearings on the murder of 55 unidentified victims in Cizre. Beyond conducting extrajudicial killings, JITEM is suspected to have disappeared some 17,000 Kurdish guerrillas, intellectuals and activists.
The families of victims came to the final hearing and participated in a sit-in to protest the verdict, mirroring the weekly sit-ins of the Saturday Mothers, who have still not recovered the bodies of their sons.
Protesters held the picture of Cemal Temizoz, the suspected leader of JITEM, with the word “killer,” but the Eskişehir 2nd High Criminal Court found that “no evidence was viable for a certain, credible and conscientious ruling,” reported the Hurriyet Daily.
The trial was originally in Şırnak, a province still healing from the conflict, but was then moved to Eskişehir, a majority pro-government city where many of the 3 million Kurds forcibly displaced by the conflict migrated.
A deputy of the opposition party CHP told Hurriyet that the lawyers representing the victims’ families were threatened and that evidence was tampered with.
One of the lawyers, Tahir Elçi, was arrested in late October ahead of the Turkish elections for saying publicly that the rebel Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is not a terrorist group. Secret witnesses that aided Temizoz’s arrest in 2009 retracted their testimonies.
One of the suspects, all of whom were facing life sentences, confessed to extrajudicial killings and reportedly used the ears of his victims from a hearing in 2011 to make prayer beads.
Though the military does not recognize JITEM, it was compromised by officers that used state resources to conduct their operations. This year, four others were tried and exonerated.
Investigations of another 200 murders between 1994 and 1995 reportedly expired, according to official statistics. CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu told journalists during his meeting with former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica that all questions to the ruling AK Party on the unsolved murders were declined.
“Our quest for justice will never end, the state’s justice system backed up the killers,” said the wife of Omer Candoruk, who was forcibly disappeared. “We condemn and curse the mentality that acquitted Cemal Temizoz and his team.”
Palestinians held hostage in their own homes by Israeli forces in al-Khalil (Hebron)
International Solidarity Movement | November 7, 2015
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Israeli forces violently took over several homes of Palestinian families in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), trapping the families inside their own homes. Large parts of the city have been declared a ‘closed military zone’, preventing Palestinians from moving, while settlers are freely roaming the streets.
Early in the morning, Israeli soldiers stormed various houses in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood, each time locking up the residents in one room of their home. The local activist group Youth Against Settlements’ centre was taken by the Israeli army. Tom, a German volunteer states: “the soldiers searched everything and left a chaos on the lower floor; we could hear children’s voices from inside the house, so it must have been settlers inside the house”.
Whereas Tom’s release from the closed military zone was secured through the intervention of his embassy, Italian journalist Francesca Borri and Palestinian activists are still held hostage by the Israeli forces. Israeli settlers from the illegal settlements in Hebron have been seen dancing, chanting ‘death to Arabs’ and celebrating outside another Palestinian family houses misappropriated for military use by the Israeli forces.
Illegal Israeli settlers celebrating the takeover of Palestinian homes by Israeli forces
Photo credit: Youth Against Settlement
Israeli forces have also declared the neighbourhood around the Ibrahimi mosque a ‘closed military zone’, following almost a week of forced closure for Palestinian shops in the area. The Palestinian market has also been closed by the Israeli forces, denying Palestinians passage. “Soldiers and settlers are making life for the Palestinians intolerable to force them to leave their houses voluntarily. This is a crime under international law. They are targeting activists to silence the truth and stop the truth from reaching the whole world”, explains Tel Rumeida resident Abed Salaymeh. Other international human rights observers have been directly targeted by Israeli forces through arrests, evictions and settler violence.
Israeli soldiers in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood of occupied Hebron Photo credit: Youth Against Settlement
In the last few weeks, Israeli forces have continuously cracked down on Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement by declaring the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood a ‘closed military zone’ and forcing all Palestinian residents to register with the Israeli army to be allowed access. Palestinians are subjected to regular body-checks at gunpoint or denied access to their homes while Israeli settlers, often armed with machine guns, are freely walking the streets. As one Palestinian resident of Tel Rumeida related, “Everyone is too scared to leave their house now.”
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From the Archives
Fact File : Civilian Internment 1939 – 1945
BBC – Compiled in 2003
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
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