العربي الديمقراطي The Latest From The Arab World
مقالات مشابهة
Ramallah-based rights group The Palestinian Prisoners Society accused Israeli authorities of cracking down on all Palestinian lawyers, following the indictments and arrests of several attorneys, charged on passing information between the Hamas and people inside and outside Israeli prisons.
The organization said that the moves against the attorneys were “dangerous” and “unprecedented”. The groups’ head Qaddura Fares said that the moves were “a scare tactic to instil fear into those who are working hard to provide the basic levels of protection for Palestinian detainees”.
Last month, 42-year-old Mohammad Abed, a native of Galilee and a Palestinian-Israeli lawyer, was indicted on charges of passing information between the Hamas leadership and detainees, allegedly receiving one million Shekels, around $ 288,800, for his services. Abed was one of four people arrested working for the Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights in the city of Nablus in West Bank.
In a statement, Israel’s Internal Security Service the Shin Bet said that the prisoner-lawyer communication would have helped in carrying out attacks in Israel.
“The cynical use by terrorist groups of the policy of respecting prisoners’ legal rights is particularly disturbing in light of the significant increase in the scope of terrorism in the West Bank, and particularly in the increase in plans to carry out kidnapping attacks for bargaining purposes to bring about the release of prisoners”, it said.
In March, a joint Israeli police-Shin Bet investigation arrested Shireen Issawi and four other lawyers working for an East Jerusalem law firm on chargers of passing coded political messages regarding military operations, collaborators with Israel and prisoner hunger strikes. According to Fares, it is a part of the attorney’s job to carry messages from the family members of the detainees, and all authorities were aware of meeting between the lawyers and their clients.
“The Israelis are aware of who these prisoners are. Some are leaders of Palestinian factions and they have been voted into these positions by other detainees and Israel knows this. So what’s changed now?” he said.
Head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society’s legal department Jawad Bulos said that the Israeli authorities had decided to “re-draw the map that identifies the interaction between lawyers and detainees”, and accused them of illegally taping and mistranslating lawyer-client conversations. “The evidence being used against the lawyers was collected during a private conversation between a detainee and a lawyer. As lawyers we should ask: Is Israel secretly listening to and taping conversations, acts that are prohibited even by Israeli law?” he said.