Date posted: May 20, 2008
By Yasmin Abou-Amer for MIFTAH Send Article
On Saturday 10th May, a press conference was held in Beit Sahour, just outside of Bethlehem, to draw attention to the plight of child prisoner, Ziad Mahfuth. One issue that has been afforded the least coverage in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that of child prisoners. Along with checkpoints and roadblocks, prison is yet another of the central features of Palestinian life. There are hundreds of Palestinian children from within the Occupied Palestinian Territories who have been arrested, interrogated and detained in severe violation of international law. According to Defence for Children International, at the end of April 2008, 327 children were held in Israeli detention facilities. Of this figure, four are girls and 12 are being held without charge or in administrative detention. Administrative detention is a procedure whereby a person is detained without charge or trial and which is permitted under international law in limited circumstances.
The press conference was to highlight the issue of child prisoners generally, with a focus on the case of Ziad Mahfuth, aged 17. In the early hours of the 2nd May 2007, Ziad was arrested from his home, the fifth time he has been arrested since he was 13 years old. On each occasion, he has been charged with throwing stones. When he was arrested for the third time however, he was also charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail. Not only was he kept in solitary confinement for a week, but he was also presented with papers written completely in Hebrew (a language he does not understand) and told he had to sign them. Out of fear and fatigue, he agreed to sign them. It later transpired that he had signed a confession and that he would have to go back to prison until the trial, at which he was sentenced to seven months in prison.
Upon his latest arrest (2nd May), he was taken to the Hagai Investigation Center in Kiryat Arba and then to Etzion Detention Center, where for five days he was questioned twice a day for half an hour. He was told by the investigators that they knew he had been throwing stones on specified dates. Nonetheless, Ziad refuted these allegations and refused to sign any papers, so he was released without a confession. It is extremely important to obtain a confession from the arrested children otherwise it is difficult to make a case. It is clear that the majority of the time, the children are intimidated to such a degree that they will willingly sign any paper placed in front of them regardless of the language in which it is written or the consequences of it being signed. These confessions serve as the primary evidence against the child, gravely inhibiting their chance of receiving a fair trial. It should be noted that stone-throwing carries a maximum sentence of 20 years; just five years less than the average murder sentence in Israel. The reason behind this hefty sentencing is politics. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, stone-throwing is considered an act of war.
Faced with the possibility of such a lengthy sentence, many defense lawyers have entered into deals offered by the military prosecution, whereby the accused pleads guilty in return for a negotiated reduced sentence. However, a groundbreaking decision by lawyers representing Palestinians before the Military Courts was made on April 17th 2008(Palestinian Prisoners’ Day) to no longer accept plea bargains on behalf of their clients. The motive behind this move is the hope that the adoption of legal defense procedures will lead to fairer trials as well as signaling to the Military Court that the imprisonment of Palestinians (particularly children) as such a rapid rate needs to be addressed. The effectiveness of this move is yet to be seen, but one thing is certain; for such an ambitious move to be productive, lawyers and NGO’s will have to remain unified in their aims. The Military Court may seek to impose harsher sentences as a result of this action and it is up to these groups to bring this to the attention of the international community.
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