An Israeli military court yesterday dismissed an appeal against the detention of a Palestinian man being held without charge and entering day 59 of a hunger strike.
The Israeli army raided the house of Khader Adnan Mohammed Musa, 33, in the early hours of December 17, blindfolding and handcuffing him in front of his two young daughters and pregnant wife before driving him away in a military jeep. Khader, from Arraba, near Jenin, is a spokesman for the militant political party Islamic Jihad, which is prominent in the northern West Bank.
Khader began a hunger strike one day into his detention when it became apparent he would not be charged with an offence and instead held under a process known as administrative detention — allowing the use of secret evidence offered by Israeli authorities and available only to the military judge but not to the detainee or their legal representatives. The state of Israel authorises its military to issue administrative detention orders against Palestinian civilians. Individuals may be held for renewable periods of up to six months and there is no limit on the number of renewals.
At Monday’s appeal hearing, during a sitting of the Israeli Military Appeals Court at Ofer, Judge Moshe Tirush ruled the secret information regarding Khader was enough to maintain his administrative detention. Referring to the evidence, Judge Tirush indicated Khader’s involvement with Islamic Jihad was a reason for his arrest and subsequent detention.
In response to a statement from Khader, detailing allegations of torture and degrading treatment suffered since the time of his arrest and delivered at an appeal hearing on February 9, Israeli prosecutors accused him of exaggeration and fabrication. Judge Tirush also stated that Khader was responsible for his current health and his decision to continue the hunger strike would not influence the court’s decisions in relation to administrative detention.
Doctors from the non-governmental organisation Physicians for Human Rights-Israel visited Khader on Monday in only the third medical consultation he has received since beginning the hunger strike. After about 42 days, individuals not consuming food lose their hearing and vision, suffering bleeding in the gums, intestines and esophagus, and the body gradually shuts down. After 45 days there is a high risk of death due to vascular system collapse or cardiac arrest.
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association lawyer Samer Sama’n visited Khader, who was shackled to his bed, in Zif Medical Centre in Safad. The Palestinian human rights organisation subsequently issued a statement condemning the military court’s “blatant disregard” of Khader Adnan’s life-threatening condition and its inaction in undertaking a serious investigation into the allegations of “torture, abuse, inhuman and degrading treatment” during the arrest, interrogation and detention. The statement added that Khader’s health has entered “an alarmingly critical stage that will have irreversible consequences and could lead to his fatal collapse at any moment”.
On Saturday, large numbers of Palestinians demonstrated in front of Ofer military prison in support of Khader. They were met with teargas and rubber bullets, some of the protesters in turn threw rocks at the soldiers.
There are more than 300 Palestinians in administrative detention in Israeli military prisons. International law allows for administrative detention but only in emergency situations but the authorities must allow for a fair hearing in which the detainee can challenge the reasons for their detention.
Both the Israeli & US political detention laws are a gross abuse of legal process.
How can these regimes be Australia’s allies without question.
They’re no better than police states……a la the Nazis or the current Burmese regime.
And Gillard & Abbott remain silent….I’m again ashamed of my country’s grovelling to these intellectually & morally corrupt regimes.
I can never understand how any nation decries crimes and “terrorism” then does the exact things that they claim are so evil. This level of hypocrisy is just so mind boggling to me.
And to further add to Kevin`s comment, when nations choose to ignore the crimes of other nations they are enabling the situation, at best or sending a message of approval at the worst. As a nation we can play a positive role in situations like this.
And they only forged our citizens passports to assassinate someone as well!
G HATRICK: your point re the passpart fiasco is well made.
And yet PM Gillard does not stop in her forlock tugging to the US/Israel alliance.
What really sickens me about the vast majority of Aussie Jews is that they will not criticise
Israel’s apartheid repressive government, who has made State-sanctioned assasinations i.e. murder, and massacring innocent civilianns in Gaza, their foreign affairs motif. Ethnic cleansing has become de rigeur in the West Bank & East Jerusalem over the past decade or so.
More than 5.1 million Palestinians have been living like far animals in bantustans in the occupied territories for more ththan 60 years
There are those decent Aussie Jews who do speak out publicly, but they’re in the great minority e.g. Antony Loewenstein, Michael Brull, John Stocker et al.
“They saw what was happening, but looked the other way”.
Now where have I heard that statement before,
Why couldn’t the “Israeli prosecutors” do much more than accuse him of exaggeration and respond, to the court and to the public “we have every minute of his incarceration recorded by surveillance cameras and available for examination”? Also the report would be more helpful to those without deep background knowledge if it detailed the procedural protections available to such prisoners. Are there, for example, some sort of public defenders, trusted by the IDF, who can be given access to much more of the evidence and charged with using it, by cross-examinaton or otherwise, to defend the prisoner? Obviously they would have to be lawyers who were known to be skilfull at obtaining instructions from the “client” and statements from witnesses without giving away information that threatened informants or other secrets of the intelligence services. It would be reassuring to know that Israel is going as far as it can to protect individual rights and liberties while protecting the state from those who are at war with it and playing by rules that pre-date all Hague and Geneva conventions.
Can some person who knows Israel well answer this, maybe even the article’s author?