Ofer Military Court, Wednesday, 28.6.06, AMRoni H. reportingRoom Nr. 4, lawsuitsJudge Dalya KaufmanLawyers: Tamar Peleg, Haled El Araj and othersEight lawsuits were heared on this morning and there was continuous coming and going when defendents and their families and lawyers were exchanged. It was very difficult to keep track of the various cases, particularly because most of them were delayed to an other date without going into the details of the charges.This was also in the case of Tamar Peleg’s client, Alayan Abu Rahme from Bil’in, who is accused of hitting a soldier on his head in the course of a demonstration. The two witnesses of the prosecution did not show up and so the hearing was delayed to 2.8.06. Peleg asked the judge to refund the travel expenses and the lost working day of her client and the judge evaluated them as IS 200 (instead of the customary IS 500). This reminds me of some instances of a rather unfair behavior of the judge Kaufman, despite the fact that she usually addressed the defendents in a personal way in their mother tongue and created the impression of being strict but correct.In the morning she got a list of lawsuits that were on the agenda. The first on the list was a prisoner, whose lawyer has not yet arrived. Out of principle she was not ready to deal with another defendent, whose lawyer was present. She read the charges and the interpreter translated them to Arabic. “Did you understand?” she asked. “I did not quite understand” he answered. “I want to know if you did or did not understand?”she asked again and he answered again “I did not really and fully understand”. After this she wrote in the protocoll: “He denies the accusations” , which is, of course, a different story!Another prisoner, Haled Walid El Azza, is asked by the judge, why he did not show up in the two last hearings. “I have been sick”. “Do you have a physician’s certificate?”. “No, I do not”. “You cannot decide by yourself to come or not to come! This is contempt of the court, a very grave offence!” Haled’s lawyer, Haled El Araj, tries to explain that in prison not every call for a physician is accepted and since he has suffered from a flue “only”, he was not admitted. He is not a free man to decide where and when to go.This is up to the prison authorities to decide! But Kaufman does not accept this explanation und asks the young man, if he has made his matriculation exams in this period, which he affirms. “For this you have time but to come to court, you do not!” In the protocoll she asks indeed to add “contempt of the court” to the list of his delicts! Is ist plausible, that she does not realize the restrictions under which a prisoner lives? At a certain stage the noise in the courtroom becomes unbearable. Everybody speaks with everybody, including the soldiers and lawyers. Kaufman threatens with the well known means of collective punishment. “If this will be going on, I’ll remove the family of the one who talks from the courtroom!” Only the defendants have families in the courtroom!Just one more instance to demonstrate the “reliability” of the courts. The prisoner Nasser Ha Dube has in his file written the year 2005 as the date of birth. Throughout the process of interrogation this has not seemed strange to anybody and only today it has been detected. In order to correct it the judge has to make a request.