Ofer - Maltreatment, Conditions of Detention

Translation: Marganit W.

Courtroom 5

Ayman Amin Ahmad Nasser – ID 981581069

Judge: Meir Vigiser

Defense: Mahmoud Hassan (from Addameer)

The defendant is active in Addameer – an organization of lawyers providing legal defense to Palestinian detainees.

He has been in detention since 15.10.12. That night, a large force of soldiers and ”Mistaarvim” (undercover agents) with dogs invaded his home, turned it upside down, and confiscated his phone, his laptop and parts of his children’s computer. He was interrogated for more than an hour by the officers, kept separate from his family, who were held in another room under threats. Later he was taken to the Russian Compound detention center. On 22.12.12 Ayman was transferred from the Russian Compound to Meggido Prison and put in solitary confinement. He was kept there for 39 days, under harsh and inhuman conditions, submitted to torture and humiliation, sometimes interrogated for 20 consecutive hours, while handcuffed and shackled and tied to a chair. At some points during the interrogation he was blindfolded and threatened by the interrogators that if he did not confess, he would be sentenced to life in jail…

Ayman told his attorney that during the interrogation he often lost his sense of time and suffered severe back pains.

So far, nothing unusual – it was all routine.

A few days before the hearing, in the middle of the night, the army broke into the offices of Addameer in Ramallah. The soldiers stole a few computers and other equipment and left the usual imprint of the Israeli “culture”.

We attach the charge sheet [Hebrew] that the military prosecutor Ms. Agranash Agnihu wrote down. It is so absurd that there is no point in reporting what the judge, the prosecution and the others said, because behind the legal formulae you can sense the army’s resentment at the fact that the Palestinians have not yet lost their thinking and volition. When you read this indictment, you realize that the entire legal bureaucracy is just a veneer, a charade, a puppet show that (unsuccessfully) tries to cover up a system of oppression, intimidation and humiliation.

But (as another legal eagle said this week in another context): Let the public judge.

So here, for your benefit, is the report of the hearing:

The defense rejected all allegations, either because Ayman Nasser’s participation in the aforementioned events was NOT on behalf of the Popular Front [for the Independence of Palestine], or because he had an alibi: he was not there.

The next hearing is set or 1.1.13.

Come to the hearing, one and all – it is a better reality show than Big Brother.