Dear friends,
please find below John Lyons' excellent article on Palestinian child political prisoners which appeared in the The Australian over the weekend.
Anyone who reads The Australian on regular basis
will be aware of its heavy pro-Zionist/pro-Israel bent. The appearance of Lyons' article is therefore a rare, but welcome surprise.
in solidarity, Kim
***
Stone cold justice
Four Palestinian youths and their guard in an Israeli courtroom. Picture: Sylvie Le Clezio Source: The Australian
**
YOU hear them before you see them. The first clue that a new group
of children is approaching is a shuffle of shoes and a clinking of
handcuffs and shackles. The door to the courtroom bursts open - four
boys, all shackled, stare into the room. Four boys looking bewildered.
They wear brown prison overalls and they trail into the room where
their fate is to be decided by a female Israeli army officer/judge, who
is sitting at the bench, waiting. The look on the face of one of the
boys changes to elation when he sees his mother at the back of the
court. He blows her a kiss. But his mother begins crying and this upsets
the boy. He begins crying too.
We're sitting in an Israeli
military court which is attached to the Ofer prison in the West Bank, 25
minutes from Jerusalem. Mondays and Tuesdays are "children's days".
Hundreds of Palestinian children from the age of 12 are brought here
each year to be tried under Israeli military law for a range of
offences. The majority are accused of throwing stones and, as the court
has close to a 100 per cent conviction rate, almost all will be
imprisoned for anything from two weeks to 10 months. Some will end up in
adult jails.
Today, groups of children in threes and fours shuffle in; some cases
last only 60 seconds, just long enough for the child to plead guilty
and hear their sentence. Sitting in a room 50m away, more children wait.
Despite their confessions, many insist that they did not throw stones
or molotov cocktails, and the human rights group Defence for Children
International estimates that about a third who pass through the system
have either been shown or signed documentation in Hebrew - a language
they cannot understand.
Others are said to have confessed under
coercion. Since January 2007, DCI has collected and translated into
English 385 sworn affidavits from Palestinian children held in Israeli
detention who claim to have suffered serious abuse: electric shocks,
beatings, threats of rape, being stripped naked, solitary confinement,
threats that their families' work permits will be revoked, and "position
abuse" - which involves a child being placed in a chair with their feet
shackled and hands tied behind their back, sometimes for hours.
This
courtroom has become a front line of one of the oldest conflicts in the
world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is Israel's conveyor belt
of justice, but it is a world away from Israel: in Israel a child cannot
be sent to prison until 14; in Israel there are laws against a child
being taken away at night; and in Israel a child cannot be interrogated
without a parent.
The Israeli Defence Forces, concerned at the
growing debate about Israel's treatment of children, has given The
Weekend Australian Magazine rare access to the court. They say too many
journalists write about it without visiting it. They are keen for me to
spend time with the army prosecutor in charge of the cases who will be
my guide during three visits to the court. I have a briefing with him
before the trials begin. The main point he wants to emphasise is that,
two years ago, the army set up this military juvenile court to take note
of children's needs. If a child needs a welfare officer or a
psychologist, they are available.
Inside the courtroom, the army's
public relations unit wants the IDF guide to sit next to me to explain
each case. I'm told I can quote him as "my guide" but not name him and
we are allowed to photograph some of the older children but not the
younger ones. Nor will they allow us to photograph children handcuffed
and shackled trying to walk - "absolutely not," my guide says. The army
obviously realises that such a photo would be enormously damaging. After
September 11 I'd seen images of alleged terrorists walking like this
but I'd never seen children treated this way. It's not surprising that
Israel doesn't want this image out there - it would look uncomfortably
like a Guantanamo Bay for kids.
Several countries, led by
Britain, are turning up the heat on Israel over the treatment of
Palestinian children - not only the manner of their arrest and
interrogation but also the conditions in which they're kept in custody.
MP Sandra Osborne, part of a British delegation that recently visited
the military court, said of the visit: "For the children we saw that
morning, the only thing that mattered was to see their families, perhaps
for the first time in months ... A whole generation is criminalised
through this process."
Gerard Horton outside Ofer prison in the West Bank. Picture: Sylvie Le Clezio
Source: The Australian
Into this world has walked Gerard Horton,
an Australian lawyer. Horton was a Sydney barrister for about eight
years and his practice included contract disputes, building insurance
cases and employment matters. In 2006, while studying for a masters in
international law, he volunteered for three months for an organisation
that represented Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. He has worked
there ever since.
During his five years at Defence for Children
International Horton says the office has increased its
evidence-gathering capacity and will only pursue credible allegations
based on sworn affidavits. He takes me through the arrest process: "Once
bound and blindfolded, the child will be led to a waiting military
vehicle and in about one-third of cases will be thrown on the metal
floor for transfer to an interrogation centre.
"Sometimes the
children are kept on the floor face down with the soldiers putting their
boots on the back of their necks, and the children are handcuffed,
sometimes with plastic handcuffs which cut into their wrists. Many
children arrive at the interrogation centres bruised and battered,
sleep-deprived and scared." The whole idea, he says, is to get a
confession as quickly as possible.
DCI has documented three cases
where children were given electric shocks by a hand-held device and
Horton claims there is one interrogator working in the settlement Gush
Etzion "who specialises in threatening children with rape". Some cases
contain horrifying allegations, such as this one from Ahmad, 15,
documented by DCI, who was taken from his home at 2am, blindfolded and
accused of throwing stones. "I managed to see the dog from under my
blindfold," he says. "They brought the dog's food and put it on my head.
I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head.
His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I
was so scared my body started shaking ... they saw me shaking and
started laughing ... Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers
near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was
terrified."
In another case, Ezzat H, 10, who was interrogated
but not charged, testified: "A soldier pointed his rifle at me. The
rifle barrel was a few centimetres from my face. I was so terrified that
I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said, 'Shivering? Tell me
where the pistol is before I shoot you.'" Another boy, Mahmoud A, was
taken by soldiers from his West Bank home in February, aged nine, after
apparently playing near a boy who'd thrown stones at soldiers. His
mother, Rana, said a soldier told her: "We are capturing him until you
bring us the other boy." Now 10, Mahmoud says during the interrogation a
soldier hit him "hard" in the face "four or five times" when he said he
did not know the names of any stone-throwers. The day we visited his
home a soldier shouted his name as we passed a checkpoint. Mahmoud began
crying and locals told soldiers he had been doing nothing wrong.
Yahia
A, 15, accused of throwing stones, testified that he was tied to a
metal pipe and beaten by a soldier, and that an interrogator placed a
device against his body and gave him an electric shock, saying, "If you
don't confess I'll keep shocking you." The interrogator, he said, gave
him another electric shock - at which point he could no longer feel his
arms or legs, had a pain in his head, and confessed.
There are
many other allegations: a boy kept in solitary confinement for 65 days;
other boys kept in solitary confinement with the lights on 24 hours a
day; a seven-year-old boy in Jerusalem taken for interrogation who says
he was hit during the questioning. The boy's lawyer said that when his
mother turned up looking for him, authorities denied he was there - even
as he was being questioned inside.
These sorts of reports are
fuelling a clamour for change in Israel among groups such as the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din, Defence for Children
International, Hamoked, B'Tselem and the Public Committee Against
Torture in Israel. DCI says that in 76 per cent of its cases children
reported violence.
Stone-throwing is a big problem in the West
Bank, with the Israeli Defence Forces reporting 2766 incidents of
rock-throwing against them or passing cars this year (up to November
14). Israeli police also say a crash in September that killed a man and
his infant son may have occurred after a rock hit their car.
But
the central issue here is that Palestinian child prisoners in the West
Bank are treated by Israel in a way that would be illegal in Israel
itself. In Israel the maximum period of detention without charge is 40
days - for Palestinian children it is 188 days. In Israel the maximum
period of detention without access to a lawyer is 48 hours - for
Palestinian children it is 90 days. For the past 44 years a Palestinian
was regarded as an adult at 16, compared to an Israeli at 18, but Israel
recently lifted this to 18. About 83 per cent of Palestinian children
before military courts are sent to prison, while 6.5 per cent of Israeli
children before regular courts go to prison.
Concern about the
treatment of children prompted 60 of Israel's leading psychologists,
academics and child experts to go public. They wrote: "Offensive arrests
and investigations that ignore the law do not serve to maintain public
order and safety. On the contrary, they inflict harm on a particularly
weak population and widen the cycle of hostility and violence."
The
Israeli Government would not discuss individual cases but did concede
changes needed to be made. "There are many things that need to be
improved," Israel's international spokesman, Yigal Palmor, said, adding
that Israel was engaged in "slow reform and improvement" and was working
with human rights groups. "This is a general problem that derives from
the fact that the West Bank is under military jurisdiction and military
law and there is obviously a discrepancy between the civil code in
Israel and the military law in the West Bank. That is the root of the
problem. But extending fully Israeli law to the West Bank would be
tantamount to annexation."
Israel is under pressure to at least
allow filming of interrogations. "We want interrogations of children
audiovisually recorded," says Horton. "This would not only provide some
protection to the children but would also protect Israeli interrogators
from any false allegations of wrongdoing."
Australian diplomats
have shown no obvious interest in the military courts despite our
Ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner, being told about the treatment of
children a year ago. She refused to comment on the situation for this
story. Says Horton: "It is disappointing that of all the diplomatic
missions in the region, Australia has been conspicuously silent on the
issue of the military courts."
It's 10 o'clock on Monday
morning and my guide and I take our seats in court. He asks me to report
that the reason Israel brings children to court is for security. With
us is an army public relations officer who says stones can be dangerous.
I agree, telling him there was a case in Sydney some years ago of a
truck driver who was killed by rocks.
The judge - army officer
Sharon Rivlin-Ahai - walks into the court. I'm shocked when the door
opens and the first group of boys appears - wearing prison overalls,
handcuffed and with feet shackled. The handcuffs are taken off before
they come through the door but the shackles remain. The four are dealt
with in minutes and the next batch is brought in. My guide must see me
blanch when the door opens - one of the boys looks so young. He leans
over to me: "He looks much younger than he is. He's actually 18." I tell
him I simply cannot believe this - he looks 12 or 13. My guide examines
the charge sheet. "He's actually 15." The boy waves at his mother. She
breaks into tears, which makes him cry as well. "Throwing 10 stones," my
guide says as one boy stands. How would soldiers in a fortified jeep
know it was 10 stones? "They know," he says. Others are brought in. My
guide must see my discomfort at how young they seem. He leans across:
"They look very young but they're not."
Then enters Moad, 15.
"He's pleading guilty," my guide says. The judge quickly hands down her
verdict: three and a half months' jail and a 2000 shekel ($525) fine. As
child number 15 stands, something hits me: not a single child has
pleaded not guilty.
I tell my guide I've never seen any court
where 100 per cent plead guilty. "The thing the indictment is based on
is true evidence," he explains. "Usually the evidence is their admission
to police."
He seems pleased everything is going so smoothly. "It
all moves quickly when there is agreement," he says. And he has high
praise for the judge. "She's a very pleasant judge," he says. "Very
pleasant." Pleasant judge aside, he senses I'm not convinced all this is
fair. "The cases don't take long because there has already been
agreement between the two sides," he says.
Israeli human rights
group Yesh Din found that in 2006 only 1.42 per cent of cases before the
military courts had any evidentiary hearing. They reported: "Attorneys
representing suspects and defendants in the military courts believe that
conducting a full evidentiary trial, including summoning witnesses and
presenting testimony, generally results in a far harsher sentence, as a
'punishment' the court imposes on the defence attorney for not securing a
plea bargain."
Another Israeli group, No Legal Frontiers,
concluded: "No separation of powers exists within the military regime
and thus the army is at the same time the legislature, the judiciary and
the executive. These fundamental flaws are irreparable as long as the
occupation persists."
Horton says the military courts function as a
system of control: "The army has to ensure that the 500,000 Jewish
settlers who live in occupied territory go about their daily business
without interruption from 2.5 million Palestinians... it is no
coincidence that most children who are arrested live close to a
settlement or a road used by settlers or the army."
He says it's
an effective system; quite often the children emerge scared and broken.
But there is little recourse. From 2001 to 2010, 645 complaints were
made against Israeli interrogators; not one resulted in a criminal
investigation. "Sometimes if there is a group of children who throw
stones and the settlers or soldiers are not clear exactly who has thrown
them, the army can go into a village at two or three in the morning and
five or 10 kids get roughed up and it scares the hell out of the whole
village," says Horton. He adds that when the army arrests children they
usually don't say why or where they are taking them.
Former
Israeli soldiers have formed Breaking the Silence, a group that has
gathered more than 700 testimonies about abuses they committed or
witnessed. Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says the army sets
out "to make Palestinians have a feeling of being chased". "The
Palestinian guy is arrested and released," Shaul says. "He has no idea
why he was arrested and why he was released so quickly. The rest of the
village wonders whether he was released because he is a collaborator."
Fadia
Saleh, who runs 11 rehabilitation centres in the West Bank dealing with
the effects of detention, says: "Usually the children isolate
themselves, they become very angry for the simplest reasons, they have
nightmares. They have lost trust in others. They don't have friends any
more because they think their friends will betray them. There is also a
stigma about them - other children and parents say, 'Be careful being
seen with him, or the Israeli soldiers will target you too.'"
Back
in the children's court, my guide says the judges are independent,
"even if they are part of the army". He adds: "We have a couple of
acquittals every year." When I say that's not very high, he says: "A
couple of dozen or so acquittals."
In comes Mahmoud, 15. "He's
going to plead guilty," says my guide. I'm no longer surprised. "He
threw one stone and the agreement is 45 days in prison and 1500 shekels
[$400] fine."
One of the last is Mohammed, also 15. He's charged
with "attempting to throw 10 stones". I ask how anyone could know he
attempted to throw 10 stones if he didn't throw one. "He wasn't able to
do it but he attempted to," my guide answers. Mohammed is the closest we
come to a not-guilty plea - he rejects the charge. From the back of the
court his mother is trying to say something. The boy makes it clear he
doesn't want her to speak but the judge rules that she can. The boy
stares at the floor as his mother begins. "There are eight people living
in our small house," she says. "They are difficult conditions and
Mohammed has had a hard life. I ask that a sentence not be given."
The
judge thanks the mother then begins her summing up. You can see the
mother tensing. The verdict: four months in prison. The mother bursts
into tears. The judge adds: "Because of the severe economic situation of
the family I have decided not to impose a fine."
The case lasts
six minutes - the longest "trial" of the day. Mohammed has been in
prison for a month and my guide explains that had he pleaded guilty he
would be free now instead of just beginning another three months. He is
taken from court. His mother sits at the back of the court, crying.
The
judge - still very pleasant - closes the court for the day. The lawyers
pack up. My guide had noted earlier that things were going smoothly. In
fact, the whole day went extremely smoothly.
