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They-re-Routinely-Tortured-for-Throwing-Rocks
They-re-Routinely-Tortured-for-Throwing-Rocks
OFER MILITARY CAMP, West Bank - Mohammed, 14, barely glanced at the Israeli military judge as he was led shuffling into the cramped courtroom, his legs in shackles.
The Palestinian boy had eyes only for his father, and mouthed the traditional Arabic greeting: Salaam Alaikum” - peace be upon you. Seven minutes later he was sentenced to four months in prison.
The prosecutor said the boy had hurled rocks at a watchtower and at Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West Bank. Upon his attorney’s advice, the boy pleaded guilty to avoid spending even more time behind bars.
Human rights groups say Mohammed’s case is typical for alleged child offenders under the military law Israel imposes on the Palestinian territory.
As of March 31, 324 Palestinian children were held in Israeli prisons, according to the Geneva-based Defense for Children International (DCI), an international rights group. With conviction rates above 95 percent, Mohammed didn’t stand much of a chance, said his lawyer, Iyad Misk.
“The Israeli military trials are a sham. As a lawyer, I’d prefer not to take part in this charade, but I still try to help the children. For a lawyer, it’s a moral dilemma,” Misk said outside the trailer at the Ofer military camp where his young client was sentenced. The trials, conducted in Hebrew and translated into Arabic, generally last just a few minutes. Lawyers are at times denied access to documents, when military officials classify the evidence as secret.
Some of the children never get a trial, but are held without charges under “administrative orders” that can run up to six months and be renewed indefinitely.
“Everything in military courts is designed in favor of the occupation,” said Khaled Quzmar, who coordinates DCI’s legal unit in the West Bank.
Lawyers say as many as 50 percent of jailed Palestinian children are held for throwing rocks. The favorite targets are security forces in watchtowers or armored vehicles, and the walls, barbed wire and fences that prevent free travel to Israel and within the West Bank.
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GAZA CITY (AFP) - Hundreds of mourners attended a funeral on Thursday for a Palestinian cameraman from the Reuters news service who was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza Strip.
Mourners carried the body of Fadel Shana, 23, draped in a Palestinian flag, from Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital to a nearby cemetery.
Alongside the body others held aloft a stretcher bearing his broken camera.
Shana was killed on Wednesday by a shell fired from an Israeli tank he was filming from several hundred metres (yards) away during a military incursion into Gaza that killed 17 other Palestinians, Reuters said.
He had been standing next to a jeep clearly marked with "TV" and "Press" stickers, Reuters said.
picture:
video: Zionism : Killing Civilians since 1895
So 19 civilians are dead including a reporter and his crew. Zionism at work.
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Comment: Do not miss what is being said, here. An Israeli tank fires upon a clearly marked press vehicle that is on Palestinian land with a shell that scatters deadly darts over a wide area and is illegal under international law. There is only one purpose for such a shell--to cause as much death and injury as possible to as many as possible in a short amount of time.(...)
Get it through your heads, people. These are the actions of psychopaths who are enjoying the mayhem they are creating in Palestine while hiding behind a wall of political protection for Israel. Few dare call Israel exactly what it is--a rogue state run by psychopaths--for fear of being called anti-Semitic, but that is the truth of the State of Israel.
The Israeli military was silent last night on whether it planned to launch the "swift, honest, and impartial investigation" into Mr Shana's death, urged by David Shlesinger, the editor-in-chief of Reuters News, who said the medical evidence underlined the case for such an inquiry.
Bordered by lemon trees on one side and an olive grove on the other, the country lane leading to Joher Al Dik, where Fadel Shana was killed doing his job, was all but deserted yesterday afternoon. But two teenage boys from the Nusseirat refugee camp displayed half a dozen of the dull, black, inch-long darts which they said they had found among the cactus growing along the verge opposite where Mr Shana had parked his unarmoured SUV to film a tank on Wednesday afternoon.
again, with reader's comment:
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